


a hot dirty streetcar that we named desire.

by reiicharu



Category: Sons of Anarchy
Genre: Ah fuck its a triangle, Anyone feel sorry for Bobby, Bad Decisions, Charming is the town where dreams go to die, Childhood Friends, Everybody Dies, Everybody You Love is Dead, Everyone Has Issues, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/M, Happy Lowman MVP, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Jax Has a Lot of Thoughts, Mutual Pining, My Beloved Smother, Not A Fix-It, Organized Crime, Past Relationship(s), Slow Burn, bad life choices, is it a warning if i say that, my first audrina i mean thomas teller, the ghost of hamlet's father i mean john teller, vaguely canon timeline for as long as i can be bothered
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-13 14:22:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28529886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reiicharu/pseuds/reiicharu
Summary: “Whether you like it or not, you belong to the Sons and to Teller. You always have, you always will. Teller will come for you. You’re the last bit of decency left in that boy, Annabel Beauchamp and I personally cannot wait to see it fall apart in front of him.”Charming will always be the town that took her first love, broke her heart and made it very clear that Charming is where the damned go and dreams die. Annabel has always known this. She got out. At least, she thought she did. That’s what Jax thought too.
Relationships: Chibs Telford/Original Character(s), Jax Teller/Original Character(s)
Comments: 51
Kudos: 26





	1. Flowers on your grave.

01; 

Flowers on your grave (Jackson) 

He returns from prison in time for Opie to be married, for Jax to hold Thomas in his arms, and to dance with Gemma and Tara and Lyla under the night sky on the grounds of the Wa Hewa, people laughing and Russians dying. 

Jackson returns to his family, his sons, to his life. 

He could have had a different life. He had a moment in prison to think about it. Actually, he had many moments. Enough to wonder about the life he would have had if he had gone to college and done an engineering degree. He probably would have moved to Chicago. Gemma would not be speaking to him. Somehow, he and Tara will still make it, just by being in the same place, same time and something happens. He thinks about leaving with Opie and opening a bicycle shop on Venice Beach, laughing at the tourists and the hipsters and people obsessed with green juice. He never meets Tara that way. 

He thinks about a life where Tommy lived. That’s the life he thought about when Tara went into labour and he heard about his son’s birth after he had been red and crying and alive for hours. Jackson thinks about Tommy and Tara knows their son’s name just from the crack in Jackson’s voice. 

The thing is, if Tommy had lived, maybe one of them would have gotten out. But in every life that Jackson sees, he wouldn’t have his sons, his boys—they’re perfect in every way, in weak hearts and bright eyes and outlaw genetics. This is the life Jackson has. This is the life that he wants (well, in some ways he wants. But the sins of the father never escape him, and he wonders if that will be the same for his sons). 

He watches Tara dance, lighting a cigarette. She’s taking a spin with Juice, who had no date or luck that night. He doesn’t know where to put his hands and Tara is trying not to laugh. 

When they go home, when he’s kissing the night air off Tara’s skin, forgetting the faces of the men he’s killed, Jackson thinks of nothing else but being home. Being in a home somewhere else. 

“We can make it happen,” he says later, stroking Tara’s dark hair. She’s leaning on him, and Jax has lit up a cigarette. They lie there, naked and a sheet barely protecting them from the soft night breeze drifting through the window. “Soon.” 

“Promise me.” 

“Wear my ring,” he retorts. Tara laughs. 

“Maybe.” 

“Babe, I can’t run away with you without a ring on that finger. It ain’t decent.” 

“Since when did you do decent?” Tara teases. 

“New leaf. Didn’t you know, prison has me a reformed man. No gang colours in daylight, making an honest woman out of you, stand up citizen of Charming.” 

All the fucking bullshit that Roosevelt pulls, clubhouse trashed, glass on the floor, he couldn’t love his Old Lady more than when she smiled and told them all, “I have some good news. We’re engaged!” 

Everyone’s pouring drinks, laughing and well into the congratulations when it’s Gemma who notices the lone figure standing in the doorway. 

“Jesus Christ, you grew up, baby.” 

“Oh my god,” Tara says, setting down the ginger ale (breastfeeding, she sighed when Tig offered her a drink and he waggled his eyebrows and said he didn’t know that was on the drinks menu. Jax would have smacked him except the look on Tara’s face had him in fits of laughter as well). “Is that you, Annabel?” 

Jackson stares at the pretty brunette who Gemma’s now got in a giant hug. Her laugh is warm, like those big brown eyes. Gemma is half scolding and half marvelling, that little Annabel Beauchamp had finally come home to Charming as a grown woman. 

Tara’s the next one and for a moment, Jax remembers being back in school, Tara being the one to correct Annabel’s homework, for the start of geometry questions that Jax to this day wouldn’t be able to answer. He remembers Tara getting her crow, and taking Bel to get her ears piercing along the way. 

“You’re engaged, that’s wonderful!” Annabel is talking a mile an hour to both Gemma and Tara, her heart shaped face lit up with that smile, curtain of dark hair tied back. Against all the broken wood and leather jackets, she sticks out in the light blue sundress, a pastel disruption, if there ever was such a thing. “Jackson Teller, an honest man.” 

The way Bel fits in his arms, as Jax whoops and lifts her off the ground, spinning around, they could be just kids again. She could have passed as Tara’s little sister, with the same pale creamy skin and dark hair. God knows that’s how close they were. 

“Fuck, look at you,” he says, stepping back, Bel’s small hands in his. “I swear, it was only a week ago when you were the little girl who burnt off the right side of your hair with Gemma’s curling iron.” 

Annabel shoves him playfully, laughing. “Says the one who just got engaged—Clay!” 

It’s another round, for Annabel’s homecoming. Even Piney is infected by Annabel’s lightness, a true smile on his otherwise weary face. Clay is pretending to measure her against him, like he did when she was eleven and insisting she had a growth spurt. 

Against the weathered and jaded harshness of the loitering croweaters, even Gemma’s shrewdness, Annabel is all warmth, genuinely pleased to meet Lyla, pressing a kiss to Opie’s cheek. She’s a breathless source of lightness that perhaps many of them haven’t felt in awhile. 

Like Tommy, Jackson thinks. What Tommy might have been. 

“Who’s the crasher?” Juice asks. He had been staring, gaze averted when Piney cleared his throat. 

Jax pours himself and Opie another whiskey. 

“That’s Annabel,” is all Opie offers up. Jax smirks at Juice’s irritation. 

“Yeah I got that, from people constantly saying ‘oh my god, Annabel is back’, what I mean is, who is she?” 

“Grew up with us,” Jax replies. They’re watching as Gemma has Annabel firmly seated with her, practically interrogating her on whatever it is she’s latched onto. Annabel’s trying to divert, wanting pictures of Abel and Thomas from Tara, who knows better than to try and rescue her. “She uh, she and my brother were in toasters around the same time. Somehow her Ma and mine had them holding play dates until,” he stops at that. 

That’s when Opie picks it up, “She was around for a bit. Then she left. College or something?” 

“No, Freddy died,” Piney speaks up, lumbering by and reaching for another beer. “Helena was already out of it all, and then Freddy died. Helena came back and then took Annabel with her.” 

“Didn’t Gemma give her a black eye?” Jax recalls. 

“I’m pretty sure she called her more irritating than herpes,” Opie corrects. 

“Freddy—wait the guy called Flickshot?” 

“Helena shacked up with him, then ran off and left Bel here,” Jax says, sighing. They briefly raise a glass, for Flickshot, a Man of Mayhem and yet with a gentle demeanour. He taught Jax how to fish, to start a fire from scratch. He was there for the great Clay Cooking Fiasco that will never be repeated. Freddy always had a place at dinners for Annabel, went to her middle school graduation, taught Annabel how to punch a throat if someone tried to attack her. He carried Annabel in his arms at twelve, when she scraped up her left side when she fell off Jackson’s bike, smacked Jax over the head for letting it happen and he had to carry her down the road to Teller-Morrow to patch her up. 

Of all her father substitutes, Flickshot meant the most to Bel. She sobbed hysterically into Opie’s shoulder at his funeral, hugging his old leather jacket for days and staring listlessly until Clay gruffly told her that Freddy wouldn’t want her to be like this. “He’d want you to live well, to be happy,” and that set her off more and she wailed hysterically into Jax’s chest. 

“So she’s Flickshot’s kid?” 

“No, her mom just shacked up with him and was flighty than a racehorse,” Jax remarks. “None of us were surprised when she didn’t come home one day.” 

“Yeah and you forged the signature for her library card,” Opie remembers, “And that school excursion form to the reservation.” 

“What can I say, I got him started on crime young.” Annabel’s standing in front of them, half empty glass in her hand. “Forgery wasn’t your strong suit though, Jack. My teacher saw through it.” 

“I could have signed,” Piney says blankly. 

“You were trying to help Freddy track down Helena,” Annabel says. Jax takes the glass from her hand; “I wasn’t done with that.” 

“You’ve always been a lightweight.” 

“A girl gets wasted on her fourteenth birthday on wine coolers that _you provided_ and you don’t let me forget it.” 

“You puked all over me,” Opie says, mildly offended. “It was pink puke.” 

“I like a good rose.” 

“And I liked that jacket, but that’s gone the way of those wine coolers.” 

Jackson laughs, before walking over to Tara, arms around her. 

“She say why she came back?” 

“No,” Tara admits. “But I did ask her if she wanted to meet the boys. Maybe I can get it out of her then.” 

“Look at you, learning from Ma.” 

Tara groans at the comparison, and Jackson can’t help but give her a cheeky kiss. 

It takes exactly three days before Bel turns up to the shop, flowers in one hand and takeaway bag of burgers in the other. 

“I was going to visit Tommy. Come with?” 

Jackson finds himself holding the takeaway bag, as Bel leaves flowers for Freddy, for JT, and for Tommy. She sits down near Tommy’s grave, and Jackson sighs. He sits with her. 

“I’m surprised you didn’t come here the first day you were back.” 

“I did. I came and I stood here for an hour before I went to see you all.” 

The flowers are white daisies. Even back then, Annabel always brought white daisies for Tommy and JT and eventually Freddy. Tara once asked her why, and Annabel said, “I used to make daisy chains with Tommy in the park. He couldn’t run with the other kids as much, and neither could I. I guess it’s the one link we have left now.” 

They sit and eat in silence. At one point, Annabel shifts, leaning against the headstone and basking in the sun. Her hand reaches down to touch the earth and Jackson has to break the silence. 

“You always said you wouldn’t come back.” 

“I also didn’t want to leave.” 

“We haven’t heard from you since over ten years ago, Bel.” 

“Annabel.” 

“What?” 

Annabel blinks at him, those brown eyes guarded and her expression oddly closed. “It’s Annabel now.” 

“No one else really calls me Jack.” 

They level their stares and Jackson balls up his burger wrapper, tossing it into the brown bag. He’s restless. He has a thousand and one problems and one more secret or tragedy doesn’t need to become another problem for him. 

“I have shit to do, Bel. I’m not going to spend my nights aching to know the reason you’re back. Just cut the crap with it.” 

“No crap here except your brains,” she says with a smirk. Jax groans, rolls his eyes. They both stand, Jax helping to pull Annabel up off the ground. She stumbles and he has to steady her, a familiar motion since she was trailing him and Op like a lost shadow. 

She’s still so small, he thinks. But not childlike, more so just slender, fragile in comparison to the rest of jagged edges of his own. 

“I have to go sign a lease on a place. Tell Gemma I found one, okay. Tara too. I’m not sure what’s worse, Gemma’s threat to have me as a temporary house guest, or Tara’s hint that I’m a more trustworthy babysitter than Strange Guy Named Chuck.” 

Jackson sniggers, as Annabel shudders. Even now, just the same as then, Gemma remains half at a loss with Annabel and also determined to smother her as she did in the aftermath of it all; a quasi replacement at times for when the ache just burned, a brighter presence than Jax and his surliness and confusion. Gemma once remarked, “Thank god I didn’t have a daughter—she would have been the opposite of Annabel, and I can’t imagine parenting something like that”. She had said this when 

Annabel had come back from school, suspended for cutting class to get fireworks for the Fourth of July barbecue, a relatively tame comparison to Jax’s own teenaged antics. 

“We’d love you watching the boys. Tara would be less worried about going back to work.” 

“I’m not moving in with newly engaged new parents. I’ve already walked in on you two more than enough times to count. I really don’t need another look at you naked and mid coitus.” 

“Who says mid coitus? In a graveyard?” 

“I’m sorry, should I call it something else?” 

“Fucking.” 

“We’re in a graveyard, Jack. Have some respect.” 

“About coitus?” 

“Oh god, shut up.” 

She’s in the office with Gemma a day later, and everyone is working loudly in the fucking garage that Jax can’t overhear it. Either ways, Gemma and Bel emerge, paperwork in Bel’s hand and Gemma nudging her off to the clubhouse when Bel’s handed them off. 

Jax wipes his oiled hands on a rag, nodding towards Bel’s retreating form, “What’s that about?” 

“Real estate asking her for a guarantor. Wanted me to sign.” 

“Well, did ya?” 

“I’m not going to leave her homeless,” Gemma scoffs, pulling out a packet of smokes. Jax takes one as well. Gemma puffs away, agitated and gears in her mind turning. Jax waits; Gemma always lets it out in the end. “Did you know she was living in LA? A drive away and not a word for ten years.” 

“I’m not some vault that Bel’s pouring secrets into, Mom.” 

“Well, you used to be.” 

“So she was living in LA, end of story.” 

“I saw the forms. Former addresses were in LA and before that, New York. That’s one side of the country and then this one.” 

“So what?” Jax mutters, smoke done, cigarette crushed under his boot. 

Gemma smirks, “I like a good mystery.” 

“You just don’t like when someone has a secret you don’t know about,” he retorts. 

She laughs, before leaning against a wall and signing the papers. Gemma hands them off to Jax, “I told her I needed a minute to think about it. You should probably give these to Bel before she genuinely thinks I’d leave her homeless.” 

“Annabel,” he corrects tiredly. 

“What?” 

“She says it’s Annabel now.” 

“Does it matter? We always called her Bel.” 

No, he thinks. It was Tommy who started it. Jax remembers Helena always calling her Annabel, always in full. Annabel, not Annie or Anna or Bella. But Tommy called her Bel, and that was what Jax called her. Gemma’s brow furrows as Jax shrugs it all off and walks off to the clubhouse. 

Ratboy is behind the bar as Juice sits with Bel. They have drinks there, as Bel has a pen and napkin, writing something down. Ratboy is smiling awkwardly when she says something to him, and Annabel looks up when Jax waves the papers. 

“Congratulations, you are now once again a resident of Charming.” 

“I have to go say thank you,” she bounds up from the chair, giddy and grabbing the lease forms from Jackson, looking up and eyes sparked with relief. Annabel rushes out, practically careening into Chibs as he lets himself in. 

The man chortles as she rushes out, apologising and calling out thanks across the yard to Gemma. “Always full of life, that one,” Chibs remarks, taking the whiskey Rat’s poured out. 

Jax leans on the bar, hand slapping down on the napkin Bel was scribbling on. 

“On the Road, Fahrenheit 451,” he reads out loud, “I was half expecting numbers, not book titles.” 

Juice turns red, and as Jax keeps staring, he pales a little. His look turns to Ratboy and the prospect clears his throat awkwardly, muttering that he’s got it, “Message received,” before he scurries off to clean some already cleaned glasses. 

“Just talking about old books and new books,” Juice says, rolling his eyes. “Come on, Jax—“ 

“I wouldn’t finish that thought, laddie,” Chibs advises, amusement radiating off him as Jackson keeps his gaze level with Juice. “Pity the man who ever tries to.” 

Juice clenches his jaw, but he nods. “Yeah, right. Got it.” He walks off, and Jax finishes his whiskey. Chibs is still at the bar. 

“Juicy ain’t that bad, Jackie Boy.” 

“I never said he was,” Jax says, reaching over the bar for the whiskey bottle. He pours them both out another one. Jax knocks the whole thing back before he admits, “She isn’t cut out for it. Bel has never been cut out for us.” 

“Yea, always been a proper one. But she’s a grown woman, Jackie. A man would have to be blind to not want to look at a pretty girl like her; you can’t run them all over with your bike, like you did when she was in school.” 

Jackson snorts, “I didn’t run that kid over. I just smashed in his tail lights.” 

When Bel turned fourteen, when her waist narrowed and her figure went from gangly limbs to svelte loveliness, she had asked Jax to ask Tara to help her with something. Later, Tara told him, “She needed someone to help her understand birth control. Some senior in the high school keeps telling her about the morning after, so that they can fuck and she had no one to talk to, Jax. She’s terrified, and I don’t think she even wants to.” 

Jax and Op had a great time, smashing up the guy’s pickup truck. Clay chortled when the car arrived at Teller-Morrow for a repair. 

He was eighteen. He was fucking in love with Tara, who was smarter than anyone he knows, who wanted to become a doctor, who fucked as hard as he did. 

Jax was eighteen and he knew that Bel was a pretty girl in a small town like Charming, a small town that eats away decency and hope so easily. A town that more than easily would rip all the goodness out of her. 

Jax and Op spent a few good years punching boys and breaking car windows until she left. Of the few who didn’t warrant violence or destruction of property, they were greeted with threatening looks from Freddy, or Clay, or Gemma’s judgemental smirk. 

And now, he knows to stand back. He knows it’s not his job anymore. 

“Jack?” 

“You okay?” 

“Yeah, it’s fine.” 

“Bel, it’s three am.” 

“Sorry. It’s fine. Night, Jack.” 

He doesn’t ask her what that was all about. The next time he sees Bel, he’s about to ride to Tucson. Tig and Chibs have got parts dissembled; metal goes into crates and it’s clockwork. 

She’s a small figure in the yard of Teller Morrow, slender limbs against the bulk of the club’s bulk. Annabel’s face is pale. She looks tired. They haven’t spoken in days. Opie said she was moving in. 

It doesn’t bother him, that Op heard from her. At fourteen, Bel had a massive crush on Opie, a surge of teenaged hormones and stars in her eyes for Opie’s strong silent calmness. By the time that Bel outgrew her crush on Opie, Jax was too anger, too lost in watching Tara drive away from their small town. They all sat on the roof, passing a bottle of Scotch between them. 

Clay’s exhaling, slow, shaky. Jax lets his eyes linger on the old man’s hands. Clay sees it. Jax doesn’t back down. 

Bel looks beyond tired, she looks worn, dimmed out. She’s got her purse slung over a shoulder and fingers fiddling with the strap. 

“Hey.” 

He nods in response, helmet strap clicking in. 

“You going somewhere far?” 

“Not as far as you did.” 

“I deserved that.” 

He sighs, leaning on the handlebars. 

Bel leans in, a sudden and tight hug. “Take care, Jack.” She holds on, tight and Jax responds, a hand reaching up to ruffle then tug her hair. 

“You take care too.” 

As they drive off, Bel is in the rear view, watching. He leaves that behind, the road long and dusty to Tucson. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly thought I'd just let this disappear into my WIP folder, but for some reason, a part of me really wants to keep writing this and seeing where it goes. A big basis of this was writing an Ophelia type character within the narrative, so god knows where the rest of this will go. 
> 
> And yes, when I say Ophelia type, that does indicate that I am a slut for tragedy.


	2. We are all liars here.

02; 

We are all liars here. (Gemma)

Tig’s god damn devil spawn comes breezing into the garage like it’s her god given right. Gemma knows that smacking sense into Dawn would make no difference. Doesn’t mean she finds herself itching to land one on the brat.

Annabel’s sitting in the clubhouse, Thomas on her lap. Piney’s downing drinks like a fish dying of thirst. Gemma will ask, but she doesn’t actually want the answer. Piney’s loyalty to the ghost of John Teller always outweighs his common sense. If anything, Gemma thinks Piney’s loyalty to JT probably held more weight in his heart than his loyalty to the club.

“You know, if Tig decides to fuck your new babysitter, Annabel seems to do well with the kids,” Gemma says, when they discuss the very nice and Spanish babysitter known as Elyda who they can only hope won’t fall for Tig’s eccentric charms.

“Tried that,” Tara sighs. “She has a job, working as an helper at the preschool.”

“Explains that,” Gemma snorts. Annabel is very at home, bouncing Thomas gently and her arms rested around him. It’s so strange, to see her as more than the little girl who held hands with Tommy and the leggy teenager who stubbornly insisted on learning to drive a stick, only to run the car up a curb and into a park bench.

When Ima Idiot pulls the gun, that’s when Annabel stands, her body shielding Thomas immediately.

“Well that escalated quickly,” Annabel mutters, from where Piney’s shoved her behind him.

“Call Ope,” Gemma snaps, to Bobby, to whoever when Ima the Idiot has left, gun and easy ass and all.

It takes more than a cigarette and a glass of whiskey to calm down. If anything, she doesn’t calm down. Annabel sits in the office with her, Gemma fuming and muttering.

“I’m all for villanising the crazy lady with the gun, but do you have another name for her besides Idiot Ima or damaged goods?”

Gemma scoffs, “If the book fits the cover.”

“I’m not sure if that’s how that saying goes.” She glares, and Annabel innocently puts her hands up. “Don’t shoot. I don’t need another gun pointed at me today.”

“That mouth of yours, Annabel,” Gemma snaps, but she sits down anyways, faintly amused. “Tara told me something about a preschool.”

“I help read books, sort out colours for finger painting and make sure everyone goes home with the right backpack. It’s not that much.”

“I can’t imagine they’d be paying you much.”

“Better than doing nothing all day and considering the merits of becoming a birdwatcher in the town of Charming, of which we have absolutely no remarkable birds.”

“I know how much your rent is. It’s more than they’d pay a brat wrangler.”

“And I told you, I’ve got it handled.” Gemma opens her mouth to argue back, but Annabel pours herself a small amount of booze, knocks it back. Gemma almost wants to laugh; Annabel in her blue floral day dress, soft dark hair shining against the faded walls of the office. The girl knocking back the shot like an Old Lady, without a single shudder, like she spent a good amount of childhood watching croweaters and reapers doing the same. Gemma is almost proud.

The roar of engines interrupts before she can pry anymore.

“Bitch pulled a gun on me,” Gemma swears, striding along. Jax has already zeroed in on Annabel, now that he knows Tara and Thomas are safe. Annabel barely keeps up with them. Clay’s mouth curls with annoyance, with the melodrama Op’s bad choice has shat all over them.

“I’m fine,” Annabel’s insisting, as Gemma is lecturing because fucking hell, Opie.

Then again, Piney takes care of his idiot son with a good punch.

It’s Annabel who is checking the wound, cleaning it with cotton and antiseptic. She’s shoving an ice pack right into Opie’s face.

“Your dad’s right. Your dick did almost get people killed. Or at the very least, shot,” Annabel tells him, grabbing Opie’s hand and moving the ice pack back onto his face. “Tara said to ice it.”

“Yeah, thanks, sure.”

“Opie,” but he stands up and walks out. When he’s gone, Annabel’s tossing things back into the first aid kit, nodding to the room. “I’m surprised we don’t hear shouting.”

“Volume doesn’t get it through the skull any better, sweetheart.”

Annabel laughs, handing back the kit. “Are you okay?”

“Me? Right as rain, you think that loose bitch actually scared me?”

“I meant,” she seems uncomfortable, searching for the words before finally, “It’s like you’re all living with your own personal time bombs strapped to your chests, trying to breathe without setting off a live wire.”

No, they’re not alright. John’s words, Clay’s actions, Gemma’s choices, none of that has ever been right. “Things are fine. Don’t be so deep, sweetheart, it’ll just get you lost in something meaningless. At least with all this.”

“Gemma—“

Tara’s walking off, a humbled yet frustrated Jax with her.

“Later,” Gemma mutters to Annabel. “You’ve been gone awhile, baby. You can’t expect things to be that easy.”

At even two years old, it was far too obvious that Annabel will forever be kind, good even. That type of goodness was rare in Charming, and it flowed endlessly, from how she shared toys with Tommy and quietened softly and quickly even after an upset.

It was around then that Helena had caught Freddy’s eye. Perhaps it was from always having pick up and drop offs with Tommy and Annabel, she was always finding an excuse to flash a pretty smile so coyly at Fred.

(Annabel has that same smile, Gemma is quite sure of it. She’s mother in a beautiful carbon copy, but where Helena’s flighty selfishness tore through, Annabel now, well.

She’s good. There’s no getting around that. That same goodness still, soft glow like old headlights in the dark.)

As children, she let Annabel and Tommy draw with crayons, on their big dining table. John had lifted her up onto his shoulders one day, and Gemma almost wanted to give him a daughter, seeing how tender he was as he galloped around with the little girl.

Almost. Not enough. She will forever love and hate him in equal fucking measure, a lava like flow through her veins.

She fucking hated Helena.

Gemma really did hate that bitch.

Tommy died, and all that could fill the void was Jax. All that could offer some comfort was Clay’s hands on her skin. And she would find Annabel there, left behind by that careless bitch, bright and beautiful little Annabel who missed Tommy as much as Gemma did.

A mother knows best, a mother always wants more for their child.

Helena was no mother. She didn’t do a damn thing for her child besides birthing her.

Gemma lost a child. Helena left hers.

So yeah, Gemma fucking hated her. Hates her still.

(If anything, Annabel is almost hers. Almost, in the sense that when Helena took her back, Gemma had to accept it. When Annabel left, Gemma could almost pretend like she never happened.

She’s lost a child before. It was like losing another one. Almost.)

Her husband calls, with the urgent business of stitching up a Mexican, “Alvarez,” Clay mutters into the phone. So with that, Tara and her medical supplies join Gemma at the clubhouse.

Annabel’s just pulling up in a little blue sedan.

“I’ve got him,” she promises. Gemma watches as Annabel carries her grandbaby. Thank god for the daycare, or else they’d have Abel seeing some of this crap too, and Abel’s probably old enough to remember this. “What happened? I could have just met you at yours.”

“No time apparently,” Tara says. “Where’s Jax?”

“Went after the shooter,” Clay mutters.

“What shooter?” Gemma demands. Annabel’s bouncing Thomas in her arms when said bleeding Mexican

Annabel’s bouncing Thomas on her arms when Gemma’s asking, “What shooter?”

The bleeding Alvarez stumbles out of the truck, supported by his two guys as Tara directs them to the clubhouse. The boys all follow, and Unser’s just pulling up. Annabel looks on, and Gemma points her to the office.

“It’s club business, baby. You go sit with him in there.”

“If she needs help, I should go in there. I’m a doctor too.”

It hits like a brick.

“What?”

“I just finished first year residency. Here, take him—” Annabel’s handing Thomas over, walking right into the club house.

Unser’s mulling over Tara’s recent death threat, as Gemma lets the news hit like bricks.

“She’s a doctor? Isn’t she working in a preschool?” Unser remarks.

"Just hold pressure there,” Tara tells Annabel. Chibs has lit up a joint, Alvarez puffing as he watches the women work over him.

“You’re a lucky man,” Annabel tells him, hand covering the wound, trying to stem some of the bleeding. “Two more inches and they would have hit an artery.”

Gemma watches on, as Tara stalks off to wash her hands. The death threat has her more wired than shaken. Two years ago, she supposes that Tara would have been afraid, but Tara’s got the steel under her skin now, the ramrod spine of an Old Lady.

“Galindo’s lost some hit men,” Alvarez rasps out, mellowed by the pot. Still, his eyes are alert and he looks at every single one of the MC, not at all unnerved. Gemma purses her lips, catches Annabel’s eyes and nod her to go wash her hands as well.

As they try to get Alvarez stitched up, Roosevelt is outside.

“You go, I can finish it,” Annabel says.

“You qualified to do that?” Alvarez tries to joke, “I got a kid barely older than you.”

“It’s okay, I can just use Gemma’s stapler if I do a bad job,” she says. He almost chuckles, as Tara hands over the instruments.

“I’ll be back in a bit, don’t rush it.”

Annabel nods, brow furrowed in concentration.

Alvarez looks at her, longer than just a glance. As if trying to put some label to her. Not an Old Lady, not a groupie.

“I can almost guarantee that this will leave a scar, but I think you already know that,” Annabel murmurs as she stitches him up, hands deft at work.

“Workplace hazards.”

“And here I was, chalking you up as an adrenaline junkie.”

The President chuckles. His men look almost surprised.

“Isn’t that also why a _chica_ like you sticks around? Second hand adrenaline.”

Annabel laughs, soft. “I’m just a good Samaritan.”

“Patching a man up after a shoot off.”

“Bad Samaritan?”

It seems to shock all of them, that she got him to laugh again.

Annabel all but avoids them until the garden fundraiser.

“No chilli?”

“It went bad, gives you a bit of a head spin,” Gemma mutters.

“That’s a shame. I haven’t had your chilli in years.”

“No, not much of that in whatever medical school you went to.”

“Gemma,” Annabel starts, but she doesn’t even continue.

“Baby, that bitch of a mother takes you away, and you’re gone for ten years. We are glad you’re back. You’ll always have a place with us, but you can’t keep leaving the blanks empty.”

“I became a doctor, Gemma, not a stripper on a pole.”

“A stripper on a pole has less secrets than you, Annabel.”

She looks almost angry, but not quite. As if the fight flared up, but died within the same moment.

“Gemma,” Annabel sighs, “Please. Just leave it.”

She walks away, before Gemma can start on it again.

Annabel is sitting on her doorstep when Gemma gets home. Tig follows them in, helps himself to a drink. All of three of them exist in silence until Tig takes the bottle to go stand sentry at the door.

“I went to Columbia. Medical school, I mean. I worked at the medical centre there. Before that, I was in NYU for pre-med. And after all that, I was in LA for a year before I came back here. Just thought I’d fill in your blanks for you.”

“I don’t give a shit about all that, Annabel.”

“If I told you that I got the money running drugs, would you have less of a problem with it?” Annabel snaps, and Gemma slams down the kettle she was filling with water.

“If you were honest to me about it, then sure, fucking push a package for all I care.”

“Why are you so mad at me for growing up?”

“I’m not mad that you grew up, baby. I just think you’re making a mess without knowing it.”

“So what? I’m back, aren’t I. Isn’t that what matters?”

“Do you even want to be back, Annabel?”

She says nothing. Gemma pushes a cup of tea across the table. Annabel takes it, refusing to look Gemma in the eyes.

“Sweetheart, talk to me.”

“I’m back, that’s all that really matters. Charming’s the only place I’ve ever been safe.”

“You used to tell me about how you wanted to get out of Charming. You even made a plan to ask Jax to drop you off at a train station with a ticket and a suitcase.”

“I also wanted to become a painter in Los Angeles, I’m pretty sure that I became a tad more realistic.”

“You never wanted to stay, Annabel.”

“But I’m safe here,” she repeats. “Charming’s the only place that’s safe.”

And yet, in a cabin in the woods, Piney is anything but safe.

If anything, Piney is dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean, I did warn you that everybody dies. Piney being the first does make me sad, but canon insisted. 
> 
> So in an attempt to try and cover my bases, I’m apparently switching POVs? It’s a strange thing as I have this compulsive need to remain consistent and yet trying to keep up with the murder mayhem and mystery of SAMCRO requires everyone to have a voice. 
> 
> Oddly enough, seeing Bel through the the eyes of others is quite interesting. The characters up their own minds which is amusing as I have an idea of where Bel’s head is at and, well. That’s for another chapter. 
> 
> It kinda drives me crazy, trying to remain canon consistent so there is a possibility of diverging off, depending where the story 
> 
> The next chapter should hopefully be Annabel’s.


	3. This can only be happily never after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw; abortion, mentions of domestic violence, piney dead :(

03;

This can only be happily never after. (Annabel)

Tara’s hand is shattered once, then twice.

Annabel sits by her bedside when Jax can’t, while Tara is asleep. She goes home to help take care of their boys, to make Abel snacks and feed Thomas his baby food. She tells them that Mommy just needs a bit of rest. She reads them stories about brave knights and castles and dragons.

She pretends that she’s not wrong. That Charming can still be safe.

_“You okay?”_

_“Yeah, it’s fine.”_

She wasn’t fine.

There was blood. There was so much blood. They told her to expect some blood, but really, Annabel wasn’t prepared for it.

Annabel Beauchamp Spencer left Los Angeles, her wedding ring left on the kitchen table. She left Los Angeles with a seven week secret, a cluster of cells and chromosomes in her belly. Annabel left Los Angeles, with divorce papers signed as Annabel Spencer, wondering if this is exactly what her mother did.

Run. And maybe the problem goes away.

In a small town like Charming, it’s not easy to find someone who can give her mifepristone. But it’s not like she would be able to take it in LA. She had been running out of time by then.

But she found it. She found a black market pharmaceutical dealer. That is to say, she knew Charming would have someone around, surely.

They met at a diner. The man gave her a price. Annabel paid in cash.

She swallowed it down, she took the duo of tablets, she told herself it’ll be alright.

God, it hurt. It hurt so much Annabel thought she would have been torn into pieces, fallen apart. But she didn’t. She brought herself to the emergency room in St Thomas, told them, “I was at seven weeks,” with blood running down her thighs and the guilt and the confusion and still, the relief that came with it.

She was pregnant and then she wasn’t.

Tara’s hand gets broken once, then twice and Jax tells her, in a self hating whisper, “It’s my fucking fault, Bel. I got us into this shit.”

Jackson tells her about the job offer. Tara’s asleep, sedated. They both sit there. No more unknown visitors, no more reformed ex girlfriends to set her off. The hospital recommended a shrink and Jackson nearly threw the doctor into a wall.

“You should go,” Annabel tells him.

His clear blue eyes fix on her. There’s a restlessness, simmering beneath. As if he’s ready to just bolt, to wheel Tara out on her stretcher, pack up a pickup truck with just a few pieces of furniture and get the hell out. Annabel can’t blame him. There’s nothing good here for any of them.

“It’s my fault, that this happened.”

“Then make it right for her, get out.”

They should talk about it. She knows he wants to. She knows he’s hiding something. And perhaps, it’s the same the other way around. For awhile, Jackson Teller might have been the person who knew her best. He taught her how to drive in one of the old TM pickups. He gave Annabel her first beer, her first cigarette, her first kiss.

“What’s happening, Jack? What is going on?”

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I keep trying, I keep trying to get something and it keeps slipping away. It’s like I have all the pieces, but they’re for different puzzles.”

“Sometimes you don’t need the whole picture, just the right piece,” Annabel says quietly. She’s looking at Tara, lying there, drugged up with a cast. Tara, who woke up teary eyed after the second surgery. Tara, who whispered whilst drugged up on morphine, “run, Annie, run” like a chemical addled premonition.

“I thought I had that. But maybe I’m the wrong piece for her.”

“Don’t say that,” Annabel tells him. She reaches over, her hand taking Jax’s. “Because if she hears that, it’ll hurt her even more. She would die for you. She nearly did. So don’t say that.”

It was a stupid thing, when she was thirteen. She turned thirteen, an official teenager, all headstrong ideas about how she wouldn’t be curbed by the conventions of expectation and white trash restraints. Jax laughed, told her to deflate her head and don’t be an idiot.

Then it hit her. She was thirteen. She was out of her childhood. She’s more than twice his age.

Tommy never got past half. Tommy died at six. He will never get to make the same mistakes, go through a rebellious phase, do stupid things. Tommy will never have that, but she will.

Annabel thought of Tommy sometimes. She used to think of him a lot, but maybe she tried to think of him less because they all say you need to move on.

Tommy was her first friend, the first boy she ever loved.

“You were babies, Bel,” Jax said. He was seventeen, smoking a cigarette as they sat on the roof of TM. It was one am. They were trying to see if she could stay up to watch the sun rise. Jax snuck her out of the house, Freddy snoring away that night.

“Doesn’t change it. I still loved him,” she retorted. She was so determined, so incensed that Jax could so easily diminish it. The memory of a love long gone. She was thirteen. She still believed in the delusional.

“The first boy you ever love shouldn’t be my dead six year old baby brother. God knows he’s my brother and he’s gone and I miss him as much as anyone does. But that’s not your first love.”

“And Tara’s yours?”

“Well, I’m just saying. I’ve felt it. How it feels to fucking love someone, enough you know you’d go to the end of the world for them.”

“Don’t change it.”

“Change what.”

“I still loved him. And he loved me.”

“You were kids, you loved everyone.”

He didn’t understand it. Maybe she didn’t understand it either (she doesn’t even understand it now). Tommy told her, “I love you, Bel, more than anything,” as he put a flower in her hair and they sat on the grass. “You’re my favourite.”

That was a week before he died.

“I thought it would have been us, forever,” she said quietly, looking up at the dark sky, faint stars twinkling above them. “You’re gonna say that we were kids. We didn’t know what we were thinking. Maybe we didn’t. But it felt like that. He was my first friend. The first boy I loved.”

That was it.

That was when Jax kissed her, a hand on the back of her head, his mouth pressed to hers, all smoky and bitter from the cigarette.

“That was from Tommy,” he told her, quietly before pressing another kiss to her forehead. “I think he would have wanted you to have that.”

She believed him.

(She wishes that she could still believe him. But then again, Annabel isn’t thirteen anymore. She doesn’t believe in the delusional anymore.)

Gemma’s face is a war ground of anger and lies, of bruises that scream violence and pain that weren’t said in words. Gemma’s a mess, and Annabel finds the first aid kit in Tara’s house. Gemma’s puffing away from a joint and Annabel tilts her head to inspect a nasty cut.

They haven’t talked about everything else, not since that night Gemma made her tea and Annabel slept over. The next morning, Gemma made her bacon and eggs. They didn’t talk about it then either.

For all the years she lived in Charming, Gemma almost mothered her. She did enough that Annabel didn’t go out into the world “like the dumb happy girl you should have been”, but she held back enough that Annabel didn’t get to see the rest of it. She wasn’t privy to club business. It was a line Freddy drew, that Gemma drew, that Jax drew.

The boys are asleep. They still have no idea what’s going on. Annabel is glad for that.

“Gem,” she says.

“Don’t.”

Please tell me you have as good at you got, she hopes. At least tell me you have his skin under nails, that you clawed out your love for him. Please, she thinks, don’t let him win.

“You don’t seem to have a concussion,” she tells Gemma later, putting away the first aid kit and penlight. “Just, please don’t go back there.”

“I’m a big girl, Annabel. I can take care of me. You take care of you.”

She reaches out, and Gemma tenses for a moment. Annabel’s hand closes on hers.

“You’re stronger than any of us. Whatever it’s about, don’t let him think he wins. Don’t be there for someone like that—“

“Is that why you left LA?”

“What?”

Gemma gestures to her face, “You gonna tell me you went through this shit? Because if you did, sweetheart, I know a guy or five. They can take care of it for you.”

Gemma is half right. It’s not the full story.

It’s enough of a story, it’s enough of a reason.

“Annabel,” Tara sighs.

She pours some water, offering the straw to Tara, who takes slow sips. There’s just the slow drip of morphine to numb the pain. It’s probably not enough. It’s not just the shattered bones that hurts. Annabel has no idea what to say.

“Jax?”

“Clubhouse. He said he’ll be back.”

With her good hand, Tara reaches over to hold onto Annabel’s. Tara’s hands are cold. Surgeon’s hands, her resident used to say, eventually, your hands go cold so that they never shake. Never let them see you falter.

Tara’s got beautiful hands. They’re slender, nimble. Tara would have been great—no, she will be. They need to think that she can, that she will. There can be no other option.

“You gotta get out of Charming,” Tara tells her, a hard whisper and her dark eyes burning, with broken rage pouring from an emptied heart, “You can’t stay here. I came back too. Look what’s happened to me.”

“Tara, you’ll recover,” at least the doctors are hopeful. They said it’s possible. “You can’t just give up. And you’ll be okay. And then you and Jax and the boys can go to Oregon, you can start over—“

“Bel, I need you to do something for me. Because if something happens to me—“

“Nothing is going to happen to you. The club won’t let it. Jax won’t let anything happen.”

“Look at me,” Tara snaps, her fingers tight around Annabel’s wrist, dragging her closer. “Annabel, this is what happens. I don’t want it to be my boys next.”

“Tara…”

The tension lingers, a suffocating haze that blankets them.

“Please, I need you to do something for me. It’s about John Teller.”

She’s leaving the hospital when she gets a call. She almost doesn’t pick up. Her head is too heavy, with even more secrets. Who knew a dead man could tell so many tales.

It’s Opie. So she picks up.

“Hello you,” Annabel says, Tara’s storage locker key slipped into her purse. “I just went to see Tara. If this is you thinking I need an escort—“

“I’m saying goodbye to my dad. He’d have wanted you here.”

Opie is red eyed, anguished and pure hot anger radiating from him. The heat of the crematorium had nothing on the fire in his belly. Annabel walks up to him, a hand on his shoulder. Opie has always been the strong one. Even back then, she always thought Opie had been the stronger one.

Piney made him that way. Made him more thoughtful than most would assume. Piney made him a man.

“Op,” she whispers, voice cracking.

Piney walked her to school when she was being taunted. Mommy skipped town again, Annie Ball? Did you make your mama run away because you’re so bad? Piney walked her to school, and dared the kids to chant.

Piney and Freddy played cards into the night. He taught her poker.

“I’m so sorry.”

She was seven years old, and Piney officiated a TM yard wedding to Opie. She made Opie vow to always give her the red M&Ms and Piney pronounced them Crow and Lady. Then he told Opie, ”Let’s see if you can win her back in eleven years when she’s too good for you.”

How many of them have to die for this?

John, Freddy, Piney.

Her hand is looped into the crook of Opie’s arm. He’s holding onto Piney’s jacket. Annabel did the same with Freddy’s, holding on as if it’s the last piece left. Almost as if you can feel them. But it’s not enough. It won’t ever be enough.

“What happened?” she asks him. She might know the answer. Tara just as good as told her. “Opie.”

“I can’t. You aren’t in this.”

She’s never in this. They’ve never told her, they wanted to.

(They’re the only ones who protected her. That’s why Charming was always so safe, because she had some knights on shining motorcycles to protect her, and look at them all now.)

Chief Unser is standing to the side, watching the flames. Annabel sometimes wishes he would leave town too. She likes Unser, not just because he has always been kind, but because he has always cared for his town more than the badge. It made him a real Chief. And she thinks if he sticks around, it’ll just be the same end for him.

He deserves better than that.

That’s the thing about Charming. A town full of people who know better, who deserve better, yet they won’t do better. This rotten town just keeps decaying.

“Opie, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me how. Talk to me, please.”

He looks at her, hands still curled up in the denim of Piney’s kutte. Even through the flame and coal, the burning casket, they are close enough she can smell the whiskey off it, the aftershave, the medicinal cream he uses for aches.

“Whatever happens, don’t get into this. It’s not your fight.”

“Opie, what—“

“Jesus Christ,” and Jax lets himself in. Annabel steps away. They can all only look, as Piney turns to ash, to dust, as he really leaves them. “What happened?”

“Found him at the cabin. Shotgun to the chest.”

Jax grabs Op into a hug. As they talk, Unser walks to the door. Annabel can’t help it, she has to ask because the pain follows, like a silent shadow. “Chief? Are you alright?”

“Don’t worry about me,” it’s a noble answer, but in that, it tells Annabel everything. That she should be worried.

“Have you talked to Gemma?”

Unser says nothing and it tells her something; not enough, but something about it, John Teller’s letters and Gemma’s bruises and Piney’s ashes are not going to be the end of this.

They watch the fire burn. Jax on one side, Annabel on the other. Opie throws the kutte, the denim eaten up by the licking flames. The anger seems to eat at him as well. The rage, the pain, the sadness. That’s all there is left, after the ashes and dust.

They need to leave the crematorium. Opie hasn’t said a word. There’s nothing that can really be said. As they walk down the stairs, to the bikes, Opie grabs Annabel by the arm, as if to force her to stay in place as he strides away.

_It’s not your fight,_ he said. It’s not, she thinks over and over. What fight. His grip is firm, almost bruising as he holds her in place at the top of the stairs, a silent order to stay. Jax follows, asking to know what really happened.

It’s their fight, she realises too late when Opie pulls the gun.

“Did you know?” he roars, “Did you _know_?”

“No, of course I didn’t!”

“My god, Opie—“

“Bel, stay out of this,” Opie yells. “He killed my wife, my father.”

She’s running down the steps, and Jax practically hurls her behind him. The gun in Opie’s hand doesn’t falter and neither does the roaring anger within him.

“It’s a club issue,” Jax insists. “We take it to the table, let everyone know,” as if blood washes off Clay’s hands if absolved by majority vote, as if it can soften the grief of a son who found his father a cold and bullet ridden corpse.

The gun is still pointed right at Jax, and Bel stands behind him. They’re breathing in the cool night air. Opie’s eyes are just empty, lifeless. As if he threw the last piece of his heart into the flames with Piney.

“It’s a club issue, Op. Please. We can talk about it. At the table. With everyone there.”

“What table,” Opie whispers. “You’re out. Remember?”

The shot pierces through the night, through the tyre as the roar of Opie’s bike tears into the darkness. Jax is yelling, trying to start Unser’s decrepit pickup. And Annabel’s stomach turns at the realisation that Tara didn’t give her the keys to the truth.

Tara gave her the keys to hell. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear, everyone is drowning in so many secrets that I don't know how they keep up with it all. I suppose this is where I start diverging off canon, as Bel now holds the keys to Tara's storage cage aka the super secret hiding place of the super secret letters by the ghost of Hamlet's father, by which I mean, John Teller. 
> 
> I consider it a success that I haven't killed anyone off this chapter. I nearly did.
> 
> Beware that there is going to be canon divergence, and perhaps a bigger focus on Bel's part in it all. Hopefully the next chapter won't take me as long to write.


	4. The great silent scream of a dying jabberwocky.

04;

The great silent scream of a dying jabberwocky. (Jackson)

Unser’s fucking truck dies out on him as he keeps trying to turn the ignition. It keeps dying on him as Opie’s sped off into the night, to commit homicide, and if the club has any say in it, fratricide. Jax loves Opie, Jax could even say he would die for Opie. And god fucking damn, he won’t let Opie kill himself over this.

“Give me your keys,” he snaps at Bel. She’s standing there, eerily calm as Jax resists the urge to kick Unser’s piece of junk non starting truck.

“What?”

“Your car, give me the fucking keys.”

“So you can chase after him and try to talk Opie down with the idea that sitting around a big brown table will bring justice for his father’s death?”

The mouth on her, Jax thinks.

“Your fucking keys, Bel.”

He storms right over to her, and Annabel meets his gaze. She doesn’t flinch.

“Keys. Now.”

“I’m coming with you.”

“No fucking way—”

“I’m coming with you,” she repeats, as Unser groans in the background. Jax wants to do the same.

“He’s going to try and fucking kill Clay, I’m not getting you involved in this.”

Annabel ignores him, walks over to her little sedan, and chucks the keys to Jax. He rips open the door, slams it as they both get in. The car revs up and Unser is there, probably wondering why didn’t he retire and buy a god damn time share in Miami or something like that. Jax doesn’t know. He just slams the pedal to the ground and the car shoots through the night.

He’s speeding through the streets, his hands curled around the steering wheel with white knuckles.

“Even if you get there, what are you going to say? Don’t hurt anyone, Opie, your grief is so strong but we’ll talk about it around the big brown table like the knights of Camelot?”

“Redwood,” Jax grunts.

“What?”

“Redwood.”

“It’s an over-exalted table, Jax.”

“Fuck you, Annabel. You aren’t in this. You never wanted to be. Don’t fucking tell me how to handle this.”

The tyres squeal as he takes a sharp turn, Annabel smacked against the side of the car from the sudden motion. She lets out a disdainful scoff, one that could almost be a clone of Gemma’s.

“Right, and the way you handle things is so great? Your wife’s in hospital, your best friend’s father just got cremated and said best friend wants to put a bullet into your stepfather—yeah, you’ve got it under control,” Annabel drawls, and if weren’t for the fact that it’d kill her, Jax might almost shove her right out of the car.

“Are you saying this is my fault?’

“No, I’m saying that this is clearly more than just the club and whatever rules and by-laws and petrol fuelled bullshit you want to wrap it up in. Piney’s dead. Opie’s dad is dead. And he thinks Clay’s killed him. And you want him to what, discuss it at a bikey board meeting?”

“You’re one to fucking talk. You left for good and now you’re back, expecting to just pick up some version of a life that you never wanted. I don’t think you’re the authority on how to handle shit.”

“What the hell does that have to do with anything?” she spits at him, and Jackson is almost sorry. But it touches a nerve, it actually exposes her and it’s been awhile since she’s shown anything beyond that laugh, the fucking genuine light that shines from her as she sat with Tara, helped with his boys, looked on as Juice twitched and shifted in uncertainty. It’s something more, and he just wants to fucking pick at the scab until it bleeds.

“I’m just saying that you want to tell me how to handle my shit and you haven’t even got yours sorted.”

“You don’t know anything, Jax—that’s another red light!”

“Someone’s about to get a bullet through the heart, red lights don’t fucking matter, Bel.”

The car comes to a screeching halt, just haphazardly parked in the middle of the yard as Jax pulls his gun out of his holster.

“Stay in the car,” Jax snaps back at Bel, who just ignores him and runs right after him towards the clubhouse. “Bel, I swear to god, you can’t fucking be here.”

“Someone’s about to get shot, maybe you might want a doctor there.”

She’s got a point, but Jax stops thinking about that when they burst into the clubhouse and Clay’s staring down the barrel of Opie’s gun. There’s no sign of hesitation, just burning anger, just pain pouring from him.

“Don’t make me kill you,” Jax all but begs, right before Opie puts three bullets into Clay. Bel lets out a terrified scream as Jax pulls the trigger, Opie collapsing to the floor.

Clay’s against the wall, blood and bullet holes. Opie’s out cold.

“Oh my god, Jax,” Bel whispers, as Jax puts his hands to Clay’s chest, trying to stem the bleeding. Pressure, hold pressure, he can hear Tara saying. Bel sees what he’s doing, and she works fast, pulling off her cardigan and pressing it to the bullet wounds as Clay groans. “Opie—”

“Call an ambulance.”

“Jack—”

Rat Boy and Unser bursts into the room, staring at the horror before them, “What happened?”

“ _Call an ambulance,”_ Jax roars, because really, isn’t that obvious enough with two people shot and bleeding.

“Gunshots,” Unser splutters, “Sheriff’s gonna be all over this.”

Clay’s spluttering, as Annabel tells him to breathe. He won’t have any of it, the old man just grunts and gasps before he spits out, “Get me outside. Happened. In the garage.”

Rat Boy helps hurl Clay up, Jax on the other side. Annabel’s cream coloured cardigan is stained with blood, her hands as well. Jax nods briefly to her and she rushes over to Opie, leaning in to check his breathing.

“What do I tell Roosevelt, huh? Mexicans?” Unser demands.

Ever scheming (and some part of Jax, a deep down part of him can’t help but admire it), Clay grunts out, “No, say it was black.”

They all hear it, Annabel’s small quiet disdainful scoff, but Jax is more so concerned on making sure that this doesn’t turn into some bloodied and even more dramatic chapter in the history of SAMCRO.

“Get rid of those guns and clean up the blood,” he snaps at Unser, who mutters something that Jax barely catches. He’s hauling Clay out with Rat Boy, “He was shot by two black guys, outside the garage. You ever want to make patch, that’s your story otherwise,” and it’s a threat, a good and clear threat that Rat Boy understand.

They leave Clay to be sprawled out in the garage. Annabel’s ripped off the bottom of her dress, using her bloodied cardigan and the cloth strip to keep Opie’s hand wrapped.

“Just keep this wrapped. He needs a hospital,” she says, tightening the makeshift bandages. There’s blood down her dress, Opie’s and Clay’s. She looks up as Jackson, brown eyes flickering in the dim light. She’s angry, but more muted than they were in the car.

“Get him into the car.”

It’s all Jackson can do, run between all of it. Clay’s sprawled in the garage, Unser standing over him. Blood still gushes from the wounds. They don’t know if he’ll make it.

“You need to get out of here too,” Unser tells him.

He’s a better man than all of them, Jackson thinks.

Jackson drives Opie to the hospital in Crane. Op sits in the back, Annabel’s hands over his to keep pressure on the bleeding.

Jax is driving to the speed limit, at Bel’s silent passive aggressive insistence. God help him, because it’s not like Jax needs anymore of this shit.

“I’m gonna kill him.”

Jax gazes at Opie in the rearview mirror. Bel looks back at him as well.

“Let me find out what happened,” Jax says, because maybe that way less people will get shot and they can hold this all together.

“Talk to your mother,” Opie snarls, “Gemma and Unser found my old man up at the cabin. They knew Clay killed him and tried to pass it off as a cartel hit.”

“Are you sure?” Bel asks him quietly.

Opie doesn’t say anything for a moment.

Within the span of hours, Annabel’s seen one assault and an attempted murder, and now comes the discussion of more murder, betrayal and club conspiracy. If she wasn’t in it before, Jax thinks, she’s in it now, blood stains on her white dress and all.

“Unser followed me up there last night. Told me.”

“You gotta lay low Op, after I drop you off. I’ll find the truth. I promise.”

Opie scoffs.

“Just what I need. Another promise.”

They’re nearly at Crane Hospital, when Op tells Annabel, “You should head back with Jax.”

“No, I can stay with you. Take you home, or call Lyla, or something,” she says, looking between the two of them.

“It’ll be safer with him,” Opie says, not even amused at the irony. “You know too much now.”

“What I know is that you owe me a new dress,” she teases, some hollow attempt at humour. Jax almost laughs. Almost.

They’re driving back to Charming, and Annabel’s stifling a yawn.

“I gotta head home. Try and keep shit together.”

“I figured,” she murmurs, head rested against the window. Whatever she’s thinking, it’ll slip out of her mind soon, exhaustion taking over her. Jax can see it in the slope of her shoulders, as she tries desperately to stay awake.

“Bel, I can’t leave you alone, not with all this shit going on.”

“I’ll be fine, Jax. I wasn’t even there. Two black guys rolled up and shot Clay. I’ll find out in the morning like the rest of us. Just like that. I’ll act shocked and worried as accordingly as you need. I’ll even worry for your safety, because it’s retaliation.”

“Fuck’s sake, Bel.”

“What do you want me to do? Tell everyone that I was there, watching Opie try to avenge his dead father and that you shot Opie because he didn’t want to talk out his feelings about Clay killing Piney sitting around that stupid brown table.”

“Redwood—”

“Fuck your redwood,” Annabel says venomously, “You promised Op that you’re going to get to the truth, didn’t you? But what are you going to do, Jax? You’re heart and soul for SAMCRO, you have been since forever. And what does SAMCRO do with the truth? What does any of this fucking town do with the truth? You just find some lies to kick over it, to bury it, until we find another truth to bury. And then another, and then another.”

“I’m getting out of Charming. I’m taking Tara, I’m taking my boys, and I will get us out. This changes nothing. I’m going to get the truth, and then, after I finish my business, I’m gone.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Yeah,” he mutters. “I do.”

“I hope you get it, I really do, Jax. But every time you try to fix something, another part of it breaks.”

“You were the one sprouting that bullshit, to not say I’m the wrong fit or something for Tara.”

“Wrong piece,” Bel corrects tiredly. “You said you were the wrong piece.”

“Does it fucking matter?”

“No, because you’re getting out, aren’t you.”

“You should too, Bel. You’ve come back. This is all there is here.”

“It’s no better anywhere else,” she tells him. “At least here, everything’s at face value. At least, it used to be.”

“What, your great life in LA as a doctor not working out for you?”

“Being a doctor was great. I want to keep being a doctor. I’m good at it. God knows I suffered through enough of medical school to become a doctor.”

“So why the fuck did you drop it all,” Jax demands, frustrated because all they’ll do is just talk around it in circles. Or maybe she’ll avoid it. Or maybe they’ll both just end up shot, because there’s a lot of that going around recently. “You went to medical school, became a doctor, and what, run back to the town you left behind.”

“Can you just drop it?”

“No, I really fucking can’t.”

“And why not? You seem to be pretty good at dropping shit and covering it up with more dirt and lies.”

Jackson pulls the car over, the two of them on the side of the highway.

The air between them is tense, both of them barely breathing, as if to breathe might spark a fight, any shift in the air fanning more oxygen onto that flickering ember of a fight that is just threatening to happen.

“You don’t get to pull this shit on me, Bel. Not after tonight.”

“You’re the one who is trying to cover up your best friend’s father’s murder. I don’t think you get to hold the high ground over truth telling.”

“Fuck, you grew up to be such a bitch,” Jackson snarls and Bel’s smile is cold, cutting. She reminds him of Helena, at her more selfish moments, reminds him of Gemma, ready to go for the throat, of Tara who knows when to hold her ground.

“It’s always been in the water in Charming, are you so surprised?”

“You were the good one.”

“What?”

“You were the good one,” he all but yells at her, “We’re the fucking asshats who shoot each other over our dead dads and make shitty deals with cartels to run heroin, you were the good one who got to go to live a normal ordinary life and go to college or whatever the fuck you did. You were meant to be the good one.”

“I’m not a little girl anymore, Jax. You can’t just keep pigeonholing me into the girl who you could always protect.” Bel lets out a soft, faltering sigh, looking over at him. She smiles, and it’s soft as well. It’s warm, and sad and it’s exactly who she is. “I learnt that no one can really protect anyone. We can only just do the best we can.”

He thinks he might shoot someone. Whoever did that to her. He wants to shoot whoever did that to her.

“So, do your best. Get out of Charming. Get Tara, and get your boys, and do your best. Because that’s all you can really do.”

Jackson doesn’t know what to say. So he starts the car, and they drive on home.

He parks outside the townhouse she’s been renting. It’s got a white porch swing. Two bedrooms, Gemma told him in passing. Two bedrooms, a bathtub and air conditioning.

“I’ll send Juice or one of the prospects to come watch you.”

“I think Juice has enough on his mind, without you giving him a hard cold reminder of what befalls him if anything were to happen to me.”

They’re both out of the car, but Bel hasn’t made a move to go inside. They both lean against her little blue car, and Jax lights up a cigarette. The sky is still dark. Maybe dawn will break in an hour or so.

“He’s fine.”

“No one is fine after whatever he’s going through, whatever puts you over the edge doesn’t just burn up and disappear.” Bel won’t even look at him when she says that. She doesn’t show a flicker of sadness, just stating it as a fact, like it’s just the basic assumption when it comes to headshrinking someone, a total stranger she doesn’t even know very well.

“He’s fine,” Jackson repeats.

“He’s not. Whatever it is, it’ll just claw away at the insides. And it’ll twist him up. And maybe, it’ll be enough to push him out. Drive him past a point of reason. Maybe not now, or today. But you never really know.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t know whether it’s just the plain truth that a brother is in need, or that Bel can so easily discuss it, without a hint of her softness, that kindness. Instead, she’s a blank canvas, those brown eyes turning up to look at the night sky.

“It sucks. Doesn’t it? It’s such a beautiful night. And everyone’s getting shot.”

When Bel moves, Jax reaches out, hand on her arm. She has no choice but to turn.

“I’m gonna sort this out.”

“I know.” Those big brown eyes stare right at him, and Jax doesn’t know whether to let her go or make another promise that he might or might not break. “Goodnight, Jack.”

She’s at her front door, when he calls out to her.

“Bel?”

“Yeah?”

He doesn’t know what to say. Neither of them break the silence. Bel just smiles at him, soft and it gives him some warmth against the night air, as she disappears into the townhouse.

For all they can argue about her leaving, Jax and Bel haven’t really talked about her leaving. Not really anyways, not the moment that he let get drowned out by booze and pussy and blood splatters, something that he’s left buried deep because they both can keep going on as if it never happened.

As if they never happened to each other.

Jax looks up at the night sky, before he decides to leave.

Bel’s right. It’s is a lovely night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, the more I write them, the more I realise that getting ahold of Jax and Bel around each other is actually harder than getting their voices when they're interacting with well, everyone else. The John Teller Letters will still play a massive part into the story, and I'm definitely slowly trudging towards my attempt at canon divergence. Which will mean character deaths, so hold onto to your butts because there's that coming. 
> 
> I've had questions as to whether or not Jax is in love with Bel, so to just say this, even as the writer, I honestly have no clue. He essentially grew up alongside her, and she clearly has always been close to him and Opie, and she almost became a Tommy substitute for him and Gemma when Tommy passed. It's hard to untie everything, when it comes down to it.
> 
> Next chapter, I have no bloody clue what's coming next, so see you then!


	5. They mark us with this pain.

05; They mark us with this pain. (Chibs)

When he arrives at the address that Jacky’s given him, Annabel is coming out of her front door, linen white blouse tucked into a pair of skinny jeans. Chibs gives a lazy wave when she spots him. He expects her to snap or smile, but instead, she just laughs.

“Aren’t you a little too important to be my escort?” she asks, walking over to Chibs and his bike. She looks up at him with a mock squint. “Oh, no. Don’t tell me, you’re slowing down a little. This is more a favour to you than me.”

“Aye, I was told to lie if you insist on telling me to piss off.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“No?”

“No,” Annabel says with a cheeky smile. She pauses, then adds on, “I’m sorry to hear about Clay. Jax told me this morning. Said he’d send someone. You do know that I’m driving to work?”

“Mm.”

“And that you’ll be rocking up to a preschool with your big black bike?”

“Yep.”

Annabel rolls her eyes, then walks to her car.

Chibs can only chuckle before they both drive off, his bike tailing her the whole way. When they do pull up, it’s on a street that definitely does not have a preschool on it.

“Two blocks away,” she explains, “You know, so the children don’t ask why I’ve got a Scotsman on a Harley following me.”

“You never used to talk back so much,” Chibs remarks. Annabel’s got a bag slung over her shoulder, and she’s rummaging through it.

“What can I say, you boys have your bikes, I have my wit.”

“That gives you an edge over us then, eh?”

She stops, before triumphantly pulling out a granola bar. “I didn’t have breakfast. I was hoping to slip out before my SAMCRO assigned escort arrived,” Bel admits, before taking a bite. She also pulls out a second one. “I’m guessing you just eat gasoline and bullets for breakfast, but this might be a nice change.”

Chibs can only chuckle a little, before he unwraps it and they both eat and walk in a slow, comfortable silence.

“Do you know? How he is?” she asks. They’re half a block away, he can see the preschool already.

“No,” he says.

Annabel says nothing, chucks out the balled up wrapper.

“He’ll be fine, lass.”

“Yeah,” she murmurs. “I have to go, or I’ll be late.”

He nods, and raises his half eaten bar in a brief wave, “Thanks for the breakfast. Tastes much better than gasoline.”

She laughs, warm like the morning before walking off.

Chibs was more so shocked than anything when he heard. They had been there, at the emergency room all night. Tig was jittery, broken, agitated. It was all undirected confusion and anger and guilt. But Tig has always been the type to self flagellate, both for pleasure and pain. Probably at the same time. They had all been there, trying to put together the pieces with what little they had.

Jax had sent him to get Annabel, “If people are after us, they’ll be after our people,” having told Phil to get to Tara’s to watch over them.

Tig’s not there when Chibs returns. Some of them are still there. Jax is standing up, brooding. He’s been brooding more and more recently.

“Gone back in surgery. Lung problems,” is the update. “Bel get on okay?”

“Got her there in one piece.”

Jax nods.

Happy gets out of his seat, and the three of them amble over to a corner. Juice is MIA, Lenny wants a sit down, Bobby in Stockton Limbo. Because it’s not like they have enough crap to worry about, with the Irish and the Mexicans and who knows, maybe the world will just take care of the problem and set itself on fire for them.

“Keep me in the loop,” Jax mutters, “I’ll go to Stockton.”

“I’ll stay,” Happy volunteers, a small grimace that turns to a smirk of anticipation, “Keep an eye out here,” in case anyone wants to try and finish the job. Chibs pities the poor fucker who tries.

Half the time, Chibs isn’t sure if Tig is even thinking. Honestly, he probably would rather Tig be doing unspeakable devious sexual acts somewhere else instead of going after the fucking Niners that required them to speed across the highway to escort him home. Fucking idiot.

But Tig is breathing hard, eyes unable to meet anyone, “I don’t give a shit,” as if the entire world is on his shoulders, as if he would have rather Clay’s bullets in his chest instead. Chibs isn’t surprised. Tig has always been Clay’s boy, even with the gap between them all right now.

“Clay’s out of surgery,” Chuck says, “And uh, there’s a guy here to fix his car.”

Jax looks ready to punch something.

“It had to be Laroy,” Happy remarks, “He’s gotta die, like a lot,” and Chibs chuckles. Happy winks a little.

There’s a very tall blonde man with his car at the entrance parking. He’s not from Charming, that much is obvious. Tall, blonde with a jawline that could cut glass. But that’s not what Chibs really looks at. Even Happy takes a moment to eye up the glossy black Audi R8 that sticks out a hooker’s ass in TM courtyard.

“Tell him to come back tomorrow,” Jax mutters at his phone goes off again.

They have to sort out the Irish today. It’s the last thing Chibs really wants to deal with, looking at Galen’s smug and cruel face. Jimmy was a right cunt but Galen’s a different breed of Irish arsehole that could be considered well earned. It’s got him this far, but Chibs could happily live the rest of his life never having to deal with the prick again.

Happy nods over at the departing Audi, “For a cage, it’s not bad.”

“Fucking useless in Charming, where’s he gonna drive it to?”

It’s Gemma’s suggestion to have Annabel brought to the clubhouse, “Safer here if the Niners are going to retaliate,” and really, it’s almost like she could be the one commanding them. Chibs has never really let it slip by, the observation that Gemma all but wears a kutte, just a step away from being the power behind the gavel.

Jax sends him, on the basis that Happy’s getting the guns they need and the fact that they suspect Tig might be unhealthily coping in other ways that hopefully don’t involve starting another war. They can only hope so, really.

When he parks two blocks away, Chibs doesn’t know why but he chuckles.

It’s a different story, when he sees Annabel at the school gate, a familiar R8 parked there.

“Ay, you alright?” he calls out, as he approaches. Annabel all by shrinks way from the conversation.

On closer look, he sees the same man from before. Clear blue eyes, broad shoulders. The man raises an eyebrow and nods towards Chibs.

“Bodyguard, Bella?”

“He’s a friend,” she replies tersely, “Please, leave.”

“Mate, the lady wants you to leave,” Chibs emphasises, and it’s odd, how she’s jittery, the way she steps back every time one of them seems to move or breathe. “Best we don’t cause a scene near a preschool, yeah?”

“Look, I’m talking to my wife, so if you could stay out of it, _mate._ ”

Bel seems to be drenched in cold water, tensing up and uncomfortable, before she snaps out, “That would be ex wife, if you’d sign the papers.”

“Not without a conversation. Come home.”

“I am never going anywhere with you,” Bel says, a low tone as she steps back, right next to Chibs. “I am never going to live under the same roof as any of you ever again, Will.”

So his name is Will.

“I won’t sign those fucking papers unless we talk about this. You can’t just walk out, Bella. I know why you want out, but we need to talk about this.”

“Fine. We can talk tonight..” Annabel starts walking away, before she warns him, “And don’t ever come to the garage, Will. Not if you know what’s good for you.”

Chibs starts walking after her when Annabel’s apparent husband named Will speaks to him, “You should be careful with her. That girl is nothing but trouble.”

“Husband of the year,” Chibs mutters.

He barely catches up to Annabel; a block away and she’s leaning against a lamp post, trying to catch her breath. She’s shaking, and when Chibs puts a hand on her, she jumps away. She all but screams for help, a soft scared noise and she relaxes when she sees who it is.

“Please. Don’t tell Jax.”

He nods, lighting up a cigarette and offering it to her.

Bel takes it, inhaling shakily. She’s still trembling.

“I know something about fucked up marriages,” he remarks, after she’s halfway through the smoke. Bel looks at him, surprised. “I had to walk away from it. You’re running.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“That wouldn’t be the first thing that comes to mind,” Chibs says, and they look right at each other. There’s hardly any traffic, the middle of the afternoon in this small town. The smoke spirals off the end of the cigarette, as Bel lifts it up to take a shaky drag. She lets it out in a soft steady stream. She offers the rest back to him, and Chibs takes it.

“What’s the first thing that comes to mind?” she asks, calmer than before. The shaking has stopped but there’s a flickering light in her eyes, a straightening of her spine.

A different girl in front of him, but then again, they all saw a girl grow up and come back to them as a stranger, almost like a beautiful ghost. Some parts of her barely there.

“That’s your business, lassie. Unless you want to involve someone.”

“Don’t tell Jax,” she repeats. “Please.”

“He followed you here. This is our town, Annabel.”

“It’s my business. I don’t get to tell you lot where to shove your guns, do I?”

“No,” Chibs agrees, “But you really think that having this follow you around isn’t going to end in some sort of mess? We got enough messes already.”

“It’s fine,” she snaps. But she loses the fight within her in that instant, body slumping as she shakes her head. “It’s complicated, Chibs. It’s not just the marriage that is the problem. Please, don’t tell anyone.”

“Jackie cares about you, it might be easier—“

“What do you think will happen, if Jax knows?”

“It’s quicker than a divorce,” Chibs offers.

At the very least, she cracks a smile at that.

Along with Galen refusing to deal without Clay at the table, Chibs finds himself between a rock and a hard place when Jax asks him later, “Bel okay?”

“You two haven’t spoken?”

“Got my hands full with Tara. She and Gemma,” he starts, and Chibs nods in understanding. Women, can’t live with them, can’t live without them—they can’t seem to live with each other either, because whatever Cold War is going on between Tara and Gemma, the tension is mounting even more now that Tara’s out of the hospital.

“I feel like you’re having me escort her because you think I need an easy day, brother.”

Jax snorts, arms crossed as he leans against the wall of the garage.

“Can’t trust her with anyone else. She could talk circles around the Prospects.”

“More like smile and bat those lashes.”

“Exactly.”

Chibs almost tells him, just because Jax looks ready to just burst. Clay shot, Juice and Bobby missing, this fucking deal with the Mexicans and the Irish, now Tig’s mess.

There’s shouting in the office, Tara and Gemma. Jax goes to see what the fuck is going on.

Chibs goes into the clubhouse, rolls a joint.

It’s just one of those kind of days.

Chibs likes to keep things simple. He’s had enough of complicated. He left that behind in Scotland, in Ireland.

The club gets complicated as it is. So he prefers his women easy. Most of the time, he prefers them to also be faceless, nameless, just another passing warm body. It’s not about betraying his marriage vows or any lingering feelings. It’s just that he doesn’t need that complication anymore.

“Chibs.”

“Annabel,” he sighs, “Do I wanna know?”

“I need your help,” she breathes out, voice shaking. “Fuck, Chibs, I need your help.”

“Bel, slow down. What happened?”

“Will. William, he’s dead. He’s dead and. He’s dead.”

He sits up in bed, trying to comprehend it. “Jesus Christ, Bel—“

“He shot himself. He just. He pulled a gun,” and she seems to slow down, to go numb, “I thought he was going to kill me. I was ready for that. I thought.”

“Bel, where are you?”

“Home. He’s here. He’s dead. Chibs. What do I do?”

Case and point, this is why Chibs prefers this uncomplicated.

When Bel opens the door, she’s pale, she’s in a T-shirt and shorts and there’s blood stains on her face and her clothes and she jolts when she sees Happy standing behind Chibs.

“What—“ she stops, confused.

“If anyone knows what to do with a body,” Chibs explains. Happy waves, almost amused.

She lets them in. She’s trembling and they don’t need to go far. There’s a man in the living room, with his brains blown out and all over the hardwood floors. And her rug.

“Good thing you don’t have carpet. Blood is a bitch with carpet,” Happy remarks, assessing the corpse splayed out in front of them. “Oh good, he’s still holding the gun.”

“You don’t understand,” she says numbly, “If he’s dead, people will come after me. They’ll think I did this.”

“You could tell the cops. He shot himself in the head when you wouldn’t call off a divorce. Not exactly a murder mystery,” Happy points out, and Chibs watches as Annabel sinks to the floor, her head in her hands.

“Give us a minute, Hap.”

He manoeuvres her into the kitchen. Chibs can hear Happy turn on the television, switching to the late night home shopping channel. Somehow that isn’t surprising.

“You gotta explain this, or we can’t help you.”

Annabel laughs, shaky. “He’s William Spencer. His family, his stepfather was Albert Whitley. Their family basically—“

“—runs the money laundering trade of the East Coast,” Chibs finishes. “You married into the Whitleys.”

“My mother gave me into the Whitleys,” she spits out, a flare of anger cracking through her fear, a flickering flame threatening to burn out whatever secrecy she’s been tied by. “That’s why she took me back to New York.”

Chibs has heard about the Whitleys. They have Irish roots, probably a shared connection. There were always rumours that they shared an Irish cousin with a Kennedy. Chibs calls bullshit but New York crime always runs their status in the blue of their blood, not the toughness of their men.

“You were sixteen,” Chibs says slowly, and he realises, “Christ, Annabel.”

She seems to catch on and let’s put a brittle laugh, “Oh Chibs, I would rather that alternative you’re thinking. That would have let me get away.”

“Yer ma sold you,” he curses out Helena, “That cunt. You’re her girl, you think she would at least tried to protect you after abandoning you.”

“She had a new family by then,” Annabel says, sitting down at the kitchen table. She’s there, still blood stained and yet calming down. She smiles, and it’s so unnerving. “She had two kids and a husband who got himself fucked by a gambling debt. How utterly wonderful that she had an extra daughter to sell away, one that she hardly knew.”

“Jesus Christ, you should have told us, anyone of us,” Chibs murmurs, “Annabel. You were a kid. If you had run, the club would have helped.”

She’s still smiling. Why is she still smiling?

(Fucking complicated women, it always leads to no good.)

“You know, I thought the same thing,” Annabel murmurs, resting her chin on her hand as she looks at Chibs, almost pitying at his disgust for her shitty mother’s actions. “I thought I was truly fucked. Then I met Albert Whitley and for some reason, the Old Man decided to hold onto me. Keep me alongside his boys and his step kids and his wife and ex wives. What’s one more, he said. I already have mouths to feed and money to burn. He thought I could be useful. I was so afraid, that any day he would change his mind. Then I turned eighteen, he had me marry his stepson and sent me to medical school. Albert Whitley didn’t want to sell me like a whore but I still got sold to pay a debt.”

“You didn’t tell anyone? Not even Jackie,” Chibs notes.

“I can’t ask him to get involved. It’ll drag him in. It’ll drag everyone into it.” She looks towards the living room, where Happy’s sitting on the sofa with the corpse of her dead husband bleeding all over the floor. “Besides, they’ll either want me dead or want me back. I’m still theirs.”

“Back? Your husband just offed himself. You don’t owe them anything, Bel.”

“I’m sorry that Will is dead,” she says, and she suddenly looks very small. Very afraid. “Will got stuck with me and he did his best. But he’s never been the strong one. That’s might by why the Old Man gave me to him. I never really understood until last year.”

Chibs leans across the table, his hand grabbing Bel by the chin. It forces her to look right at him. There’s flecks of blood against her pale skin, like Snow White after a murder with her long dark hair and those big brown eyes. “Listen to me. You’re not anyone’s. Your ma was a cunt. You’re here now. It’s over. That part of it is over.”

“You didn’t ask me.”

“What?”

“You didn’t ask me,” she repeats, “You were meant to ask how I got away. Why they never put me to work to pay off a debt from one whore’s new man.”

“Does it matter?”

“It might be a bigger incentive, to help me get rid of the body.”

She brushes his hand away, but she doesn’t pull back. Her hand is so small, when it takes his, holding it tight. As if to steel herself. As if whatever she has to say, the rest of this painful dark tale requires borrowed strength.

“Albert Whitley has four sons. But his favourite son, Nick, he hated me. Hated me from the moment he met me. I never knew why. I assumed it was because I was the daughter of a whore who landed on her feet.” Her hand tightens, the nails digging in, but she doesn’t seem to notice, and Chibs doesn’t pull back. She’s afraid. That much is certain. She’s afraid but Annabel pushes through, as if she cannot hold it back anymore, whatever secret she’s been hiding from her once surrogate family in Charming. “I always wondered why the Old Man made me marry William. I always wondered why he never let me get put to work.”

“Maybe he thought you were nice to look at,” Chibs jokes, and even at that, Annabel cracks a small smile.

“Oh, you have no idea.”

“What?”

“Two years ago, Will moved us to LA. He said it would be nice to get away. Maybe start a life that isn’t tied to whatever the Old Man decided and what Nick wants. And he wanted to get me away from Nick.”

“He’s a piece of work that one,” the Irish had dealings with Nicholas Whitley in the recent years, Chibs heard that he’s a great shot with nerves of steel, a hell of a negotiator, and a piece of fucking work. He didn’t pay much mind to it, not to an organisation and family on the other side of the country. “You said he hated you.”

“Hate manifests in weird ways,” Annabel remarks. Her hand slips away, but Chibs tightens his.

“Annabel.”

“I thought Will was right. Start a life on the other side of the country. Besides, the Old Man was dying.”

“Was?”

“He’s dead now,” she says, blinking back fucking tears. Chibs isn’t good with girls when they cry. But brave and broken Annabel Beauchamp, she doesn’t let up, she doesn’t sob or whimper. “He died a few months ago.”

“You came back only recently.”

“I came back because I was pregnant, and I didn’t want to keep it. Because Nicholas Whitley isn’t just a monster, he isn’t just the boy I lived alongside who would hurt me, who found as many ways as he could to make my life miserable to make himself feel like a man. He’s not just all that. He’s also my brother.”

She looks towards the living room, at the corpse of the man she was pushed into marrying.

“He had a tape. Of William. With someone. With a man. He must have loved him, I think. I never asked. The less I knew, the better. If Will didn’t come home with me,” her voice trails off, “At least this way, no one gets the blame. I don’t know. I don’t know, honestly. Like you said, he’s a piece of work.”

Chibs stares, shellshocked.

“I didn’t know. Until he was dying. I didn’t know.”

“He’s your brother,” Chibs says, disgusted and confused and Annabel looks so tired and so weary and he wonders if she has another secret forced upon her, she’ll crack. She’s had enough this one.

“And he’s going to think I did this. So we need to get rid of the body. Because the only way I will let Nicholas Whitley have me is if I’m in a coffin.”

She stands up, walking to the living room. Happy pretends as if he didn’t hear any of it. He keeps watching the home shopping channel. They’re selling mittens. For the feet.

Chibs looks at the girl standing over the body of her dead husband. The girl who smiles with warm sunlight, paying for someone else’s choices, broken by another person’s ego.

“So, bury or burn?” he asks Happy.

It’s the least they can do, really.

Chibs doesn’t know how Happy has a casual contact with the Lodi City Morgue. He also doesn’t ask why the guy so easily sneaks them in and doesn’t ask about the dead man wrapped in a rug who they burn in the incinerator.

Later, Happy hands the Morgue Guy an envelope full of cash and the guy gives them the ashes.

“When did you become mates?” he asks.

Happy stares right through Chibs, “No idea what you’re talking about.”

Ah, he thinks. This is a one off then. It’s a shame. There are moments when they could use a local morgue man with an incinerator.

The sun isn’t up but the sky is cracking colours through the dawn. Happy hands Annabel the ashes and they get back in the R8 to drive back to Charming.

“Don’t take the bikes. It’s not subtle,” Chibs mutters, “Because driving this fancy douche carriage isn’t gonna get us noticed.”

“We can cube it,” is Happy’s solution. “I know a guy.”

Chibs genuinely wonders how many guys Happy knows.

“Thank you,” Annabel says, from the back seat. “I know that you didn’t have to do this.”

“What did we do?” Happy asks, eyes focused on the road.

Chibs chuckles, and Happy’s mouth quirks into a small smile.

He has no idea what she does with the ashes.

The car does get cubed though. Chibs has no idea what Happy has done with the cube.

They don’t get to talk about it. Chibs is quite sure that Annabel doesn’t want to talk about it. Instead, Tara packs her bags and Gemma skulks around, both of them in a Cold War over something that no one really quite knows. Jax paces around, mood darkened at any mention of Clay. Tara and Gemma don’t let up, on their invisible tug’o’war.

Around Jax, Annabel is calm, she is teasing. She gently tries to approach Tara, tries to approach Gemma. As if she didn’t just bare the broken part of her soul over a kitchen table with her dead husband just metres away.

“He’s going to get tore apart,” Annabel remarks when Jax’s bike goes screeching out of the yard as he goes to handle more business. She’s come out of Gemma’s office, unruffled. “I heard Clay is out of the woods.”

Chibs glances over at her, “Aye.”

“No solution to the Irish?”

“Not until Clay’s on his feet.”

She seems to be thinking hard, leaning against one of the posts of the shed. Chibs leans on the other side. He continues smoking. Annabel doesn’t even look up as she reaches a hand over and he passes the cigarette.

She exhales slowly, before saying, “How bad is it?”

“Whatever is going on or the Irish? The answer is the same.”

Bel hands him the cigarette, and nods towards the office where Gemma is supposedly doing the books. Chibs suspects she’s found herself a nice bottle of whiskey to drown out whatever stress that is riding her shoulders this time.

“They both want him. They both love him. They both need him.”

“Aye.”

“There’s a solution to the Irish.”

Chibs finishes off the smoke. He lights up another. There’s a backbone to this girl when she says it. That’s the thing, he realises, about complicated women. They’re forged with fire.

The moment passes, the two of them passing the cigarette between them, just like how she’s passed her secrets to him. A beautiful ghost, he thinks. The pieces of a girl who was once there, shrouded in the sins of the past.

“They will deal with a Whitley.”

“I just burnt the evidence to keep that a secret for you.” But he’s unaffected. He sees it in her, that in the end, blood might just be thicker than water. She can hide all she wants, but she’s the Old Man’s daughter. “You deal with the Irish, your brother will know. And then he’ll come.”

“Let him come.”

“And then what?”

“And then, there’s always collateral damage when it comes to men with big guns.”

Chibs doesn’t need to think on it. He knows Jax will say no. He also knows that right now, it might be the only available solution. They’ve got the Mexicans pressing down, a boot to the throat. They have the Niners ready to bring blood to their door step.

“Jax won’t like it.”

Annabel leans in, smiles and says, “He won’t like this, either.” She kisses him, the lingering taste of a shared cigarette melded with that of a complication.

Her fingers dig into the fabric of his shirt. Annabel is smaller than him, she’s also breakable. Chibs knows women, he knows the women he fucks tend to be tougher stuff, they aren’t afraid to let him fuck them raw. Annabel kisses him soft, then hard. Her hand knots into his hair, petite body pressed against him. She’s breakable, she’s vulnerable. She’s flushed, she’s determined.

It occurs to him, that maybe none of them really know her anymore. It occurs to him to stop. He’s old enough to be her father, but he’s also fucked daddy issue pussy with no guilt. It occurs to him that she might just be fucking away her feelings, and he could just be another warm body to her.

If he learnt his lesson, with complicated women, he would have the strength to stop. A better man might stop, might not enjoy the way she presses hands up under his shirt against his skin, might not be the one to grab her, to shove her against the wall of the garage to bite her neck, to pull her hand. A better man, a decent man—a good man would stop, and surely after it all, Annabel Beauchamp deserve a good man.

He’s neither of those things, Chibs is very much aware that he’s neither decent nor good.

They’ll be lying in his bed in the clubhouse later. He does fuck her raw, he does make her come, asks her if she likes his cock in her. He has her twice, has her gagging on his cock until her eyes water. Chibs leaves bite marks along her collarbone, on her tits, his handprints on that pale ass of hers. He buries himself in her, holds her down and makes her beg him, makes her beg him to give her release.

They’ll be lying there later, Annabel asleep with her fair skin a stark contrast to the dark sheets, the borderline squalor of the room. Chibs reaches a hand out, fingers tangling in her soft hair. God, she grew up to be so fucking beautiful.

Maybe this will just be the one time and the last time.

Chibs knows he’s just fooling himself with that hope. He doesn’t even truly believe it.

Besides, what’s one more complication in his life anyways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this snuck up on me. Actually that’s a lie. The moment I decided to give Chibs a chapter, I knew he was doomed. 
> 
> Good luck to anyone that got through the dramatic backstory explanation that now means Nicholas fucking Whitley is coming to town. William Spencer, RIP how we hardly knew ye. 
> 
> Also, I won’t lie that Happy was basically my favourite part of writing this. Fucking Happy just creates his own brilliance.


	6. Tomorrow before our war begins.

06; tomorrow before our war begins. (Annabel)

She wakes up to Chibs getting dressed. Her eyes linger on the ink on his skin, the scars faded over. His back is to her. Annabel watches for a moment before she asks him, “Pass me that?”

The man turns, hand running through salt and pepper hair. He doesn’t look guilty, but she knows the hesitation. Chibs hands her the clothes he left rumpled on the floor. Somehow, it makes her smile as he watches, eyes on her as she pulls herself together. He’s left her marked, bruises on her skin, bruises she likes from a fucking she wanted.

“Bel, look—“

“It’s okay,” she interrupts. Chibs leans against the desk in his room. There’s a gun on it, bottle of Scotch, pieces of a disassembled watch. He told her that he learnt it from his father, when they were lying there after, as she was falling asleep. His da was gentle, his ma was rancid. Learnt how to put together clocks and watches. She wonders if that explains his sympathies yesterday, because they both know better, they both know that a damsel in distress isn’t really enough to explain him keeping her secrets. “It’s okay.”

“Jacky’s going to kill me,” he remarks.

Annabel can’t help but smile.

“He doesn’t need to know. I’m not going to stare after you all puppy eyed and hope for you to notice me again. I told you, it’s okay.”

“You alright?”

“Yeah,” she tilts her head to the door, “If you need to go, it’s fine. I can see myself home.”

They stand there, the air tense before he walks over to her, taking her face in his hands. They’re rough. Too many hours with a wrench and a gun and on the road.

“You are fucking beautiful,” Chibs tells her, voice gravelled at he looks at her. That’s the thing, he had no problems seeing her. She didn’t recoil any time he touched her, didn’t flinch any time he really looked at her. It didn’t hurt in all the bad ways.

She kisses him again, because he’s strong and safe and it doesn’t hurt. It doesn’t make her flinch or make her want to claw her skin off. Every burning touch is like fire and oxygen, heat and exposure.

“This never happened,” she says softly, “I won’t get you into trouble.”

His mouth quirks, a tiny smirk.

“Girls like you, you’re nothing but trouble.”

“So, I should just go. Or you should go. Before any trouble happens.”

He laughs, deep. Bel waits, because one of them should walk out of the room. For a second, his hands on her tightens, as if they could just do it all again, fall back into bed and fucking, as if it’s that easy. Because it is that easy.

But Chibs steps back, grabs his gun and walks out of the dorm room. He’s almost regretful.

Bel knows the feeling.

Maybe it’s a god damn miracle, but she makes it out of the clubhouse unsighted. Well, save for weird Chucky and Rat, who takes one look but also pointedly looks away.

She did mean it, every word. When Bel watches Will’s body burn, she didn’t feel sorrow. She felt angry. She felt like screaming, felt like breaking something. She hated him at times, but maybe because they were both a prisoner to each other.

She meant it. Collateral damage.

That’s what he was. William was collateral damage. The Whitleys never had much of an issue with that. She wondered back then, even now, if being born a Whitley means you might be lacking a conscience. She doesn’t want to know if the same applies to her.

It was all death bed confessions that made it hurt even more. Death bed confessions and more truths, more lord, Bel’s not sure which one of it was worse.

“You’re my girl,” the Old Man told her, “You don’t have my name, but you’re my blood. You can have anything, Bella, anything in this world. You’re my blood. You’re a Whitley.”

I’m not yours, she wanted to scream. You lied to me for years. Why. What is wrong with you. How could you. Don’t go, not yet. I have to ask you so much. Don’t. Not yet. You owe me this.

Albert went so quick, Bel sitting on the bed with her hands in his. He went, with a smile, “You are the one good thing I did in this lifetime, Bella.”

No. No, you don’t get to do this. You don’t get to say that, no. Stay awake. Stay—

Did you know, she’ll ask William later. Did you know that he was my father. William looked away, and it cracked something open inside of her. She pushed him, shoved him, screamed at him.

He tried, he really tried. He arranged this to protect you. The Old Man tried so hard—

No.

No one protected her.

“Penny for your thoughts and a dime for your daydream.”

She jerks out of it, looking at Gemma. They stand outside the TM garage, Gemma with her arms folded.

“That’s a funny saying.”

“My dad used to say it,” Gemma notes. “I fucking hated it.”

“Are things any better?” Bel asks, “With well, everything.”

“No, honey. But that’s not for you to worry about.” Her eyes are sharp, and Bel resists the urge to pull up the collar of her dress. “You been seeing someone?”

“Nothing much to do in this town,” she jokes weakly.

“And yet you came back.”

She wants to tell Gemma. Gemma always has a solution. That’s how she grew up, running to Gemma with her problems. A boy was mean to her. Her mom didn’t come home. The kids at school call her snooty snot face. She’s bleeding and her tummy hurts. Her mom isn’t coming back, is she.

“Maybe I missed looking at your smiling face.”

Gemma scoffs, unimpressed.

“I’m gonna head home. Try not to bite anymore heads off.”

“I won’t promise that.”

“I said try.”

“Yeah, I can’t promise that either.”

She doesn’t go home. She drives to Jax’s place, parks and Tara lets her in. Her arm is still in a cast, and her mood is dark. Bel puts on the kettle, and picks up Abel to say hello, spinning him around briefly. She ducks down to kiss Thomas on the head. There’s a serenity to baby Thomas that reminds her of Tommy.

“I know this isn’t a social call,” Tara says flatly. “Gemma sent you to make peace?”

“God no,” Bel replies, searching for the mugs. “But I did do what you ask.”

Tara sits up straighter, her gaze hardening. “I shouldn’t have asked you. Clay came to my room, before he got shot. To ask me for the letters. It’s the type of shit that could have gotten me killed. I shouldn’t have put you in danger.”

It’s utterly bizarre, that people worry about keeping her safe when Bel just has the body of her sham husband cremated. But she shrugs, fixes some tea and puts the mugs on the table. Tara doesn’t reach for hers but Bel warms her hands around the hot drink. It settles her, just for a bit.

“No one knows. I haven’t told anyone.”

“Not Jax?”

She shakes her head.

“But you read them?”

“Yes.”

“So you know why they’d kill for those letters.”

“I think people do very awful things for strange reasons and that doing more awful things doesn’t change the past,” Bel says quietly. “But I know you’re not a terrible person. You still haven’t told him because it’d hurt him.”

“Gemma wants those letters.”

“Gemma wants to bury her secrets and keep Jax chained to the club forever.”

Bel takes a sip of tea, fiddling with the string on the bag. She doesn’t know who is in the right. She doesn’t know if she can even hate anyone for what she read. She saw John’s pain, but she saw Gemma’s loneliness, Clay’s envy. She saw the loss of Tommy and it just makes her wonder what else will Jax lose if he reads those letters.

“What do you want, Tara?”

“I don’t want my boys to become this.”

“You’re a good mom,” Bel offers. Tara blinks, surprised at the bluntness. “I mean it. I’m not patronising you, I actually mean that you’re a good mother. Your boys come first. Before yourself or Jax or anything.”

“Did you bring them?” Tara asks abruptly, trying to change the subject.

“No.”

That flare of her temper flickers across her face, those dark eyes narrowing. “Annabel.”

“You told me to keep the letters safe.”

“And now I’m asking for them back.”

“Tara, if I give you those letters, what are you going to do? Use them to force Jax out? He’s doing everything he can to get you and the boys out.”

“It’s not your business,” Tara snaps, but she lets out a frustrated sigh. “I shouldn’t have put you in this position. I know you care about Jax and Gemma, but this isn’t the time to put whatever loyalty first. If Clay knows you have them, he might kill you.”

“Clay’s in a hospital bed, and you’re still standing.”

“Annabel—“

“You were so afraid. I remember you so scared and when I got those letters for you, I read them. And I don’t know anymore, whether you were afraid for yourself, or your boys, or that maybe Jax might never get out.”

“Is it so wrong that I want him away from this shit?”

“I think that it needs to be his own choice, not one that he’s pushed into by either of you.”

Tara glares at her, but then she lets up. She softens, drinks her tea.

“I think you should give the letters to Clay, Tara. Don’t let the bomb go off. Give the letters fo Clay. Let him think he’s won. And then you take Jax and your boys and you get out.”

“Then he will never know the truth about them, Gemma or Clay or any of their bullshit.”

“Are you trying to get away from the club or are you trying to destroy everyone so that Jax doesn’t have it left to come back to?”

Tara stays silent. Maybe she doesn’t even know how to answer. Maybe she doesn’t want to think about the answer, what it really says about her, the truth behind all noble intentions she has for her family. Maybe she doesn’t want to see Gemma reflected back upon her.

“Trust him, Tara. He loves you. He wants to get out, for you. Isn’t that enough?”

Annabel stands up to leave, when Tara asks her, “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Do you love him, Bel?”

“Of course I do. All of you are as close as I have to family. You know this.”

Tara sees her out, grabbing her for what would have been an affectionate hug. But Tara learnt her tricks at the feet of the master, her moves are a shadow of Gemma’s.

“You’re a good liar, Annabel. You never used to be.”

“Tara—“

“If you love him, give me the letters.”

She disappears back into the house, the harsh words left to hang in the air.

Gemma would be proud.

She cleaned and cleaned the floor that night. Happy already had it drenched with bleach, to make sure nothing remains. But Bel cleaned the floor over and over until she sat there, sobbing that she’s sorry. Maybe whatever his soul ended up, he heard her. She can only hope.

She buys a new rug, throws it down when she gets hime. Covers it up, like it never happened.

Nick got to the hospital too late. She was sitting in the room, a sheet over the Old Man’s head. Everyone was on the way. Nick was too late.

“I’m so sorry,” she couldn’t say more than that. She was apologising to the half brother who hated her, for the father who lied to them. What else did he lie about.

She expected him to yell, to hit her. She expected something. He walked over to her and she waited for it.

Instead, he was on his knees, his head rested in her lap, as if the invisible crown was weighing down too heavily upon him.

She wanted to push him away, wanted to get his hands off her. But Nick said absolutely nothing and Annabel could only rest her hand on his head.

“I’m so sorry,” she said again.

Because, well. She was.

Clay looks rather displaced in the hospital bed, hooked up to monitors and clad in a thin gown. It strikes Annabel as rather grim that all the people on her life are dropping like flies. It could be a sign, if she believed in that sort of thing. Annabel doesn’t know what she believes in anymore.

He cracks his eyes open as she closes the door.

“You finally come to see me?” he rasps out.

There’s a Prospect outside the door. Nurses in and out of different rooms. She misses it, misses the routine of hospital work, of a scalpel in her hand. How everything makes more sense there whilst everything else remains as pure confusion.

“How are you feeling?” she asks quietly, pulling up a chair next to Clay.

“Shit.”

“Bullets through the chest will do that to you.”

She sits in uncomfortable silence and Clay closes his eyes. She looks at his morphine levels and his heart monitor. Her hand reaches out for the chart, and that’s when Clay clears his throat.

“You want to tell me what you’re here?”

She takes the chart anyways and flips through it. It’s easier, so much easier to read the procedures he went through, the state of his body, the mess of his lungs, “You should listen when you get out. They’ll tell you to stop smoking.”

“Keep it in mind.” She puts the chart aside and Clay offers her a wry smirk. “So, have you decided where you land in all this?”

“It’s club business, I’m not the one who sits at that table.”

“You’re in it now, Annabel. Why else are you here?”

She has questions. Why your best friend’s wife, why send a man to die, why all the lies. She abs more questions, like how many more of them will get torn apart by their secrets and their fights, as if to fly near crows means to sign yourself up for murder.

“I read the letters.”

If he’s surprised, Clay doesn’t show it. If he’s adding her to the list of people that he needs to handle, Annabel will not be surprised.

“So you’ve decided you hate me. Don’t be surprised, but there’s a fucking line.”

“I don’t think it matters to me. I’m not trying to change the past.” But she stands up, looking at the monitors calmly. “But I think that if someone doesn’t draw the lines, you’ll all just consume yourselves and in the end, who does that help? Maybe the funeral home, it’s good business for them.”

Her fingers run over the buttons, as she fiddles with it. Clay lets out a guttural moan as she keeps her eyes steady on the medication levels.

“Tara asked me if I love him. She wants the letters. She says you might kill me.”

The morphine drops and he’s groaning in pain, and Annabel lets out a slow, steady breath.

“The thing is, she told me to keep them safe. To make sure that when the time is right, to tell everyone what happened. Who you are. Who Gemma is. To show everyone the truth.”

Clay grunts, groaning and Annabel presses a hand to his head, stroking his forehead as she shushes him.

“It’s just pain, you’ve been through worse,” she remarks, as he looks up at her, angry and almost confused at what she’s doing, “I don’t doubt you killed Piney. I saw what you did. I know what you’re capable of. And I know what Gemma is capable of too.”

“You kill me now, how’s that going to look?”

“Clay, why would I want to kill you?” Annabel asks calmly, before she changes the settings and his heart rate slows, and a shaking hand reaches up to rest on his chest, over his bandages as he wheezes and the morphine floods his system. “I might be the only person in this town who wants to keep you alive.”

“What the fuck are you playing at?” he growls out, but the gravitas is lost on her, with his voice crackling from the searing pain, aware that she’s still got a hand on the monitor. “What do you want?”

“I want you to give the gavel to Jax. You’re done. You show your face, you make good on the Irish. But you’re done deciding who lives and who dies by the dishonour of your redwood chapel.”

He wheezes and coughs, and glares up at her. But for a second, he cracks a vicious terrifying grin.

“You’re not invincible, Annabel. I had men go after Tara. What keeps you safe from me?”

“You could try and see what happens,” she volunteers, smiling back at him, adjusting the blanket to cover him better. She takes his kutte that’s been flung over a chair. “But why go there? Why go straight to mutually assured destruction when there’s other options? That’s the thing about men on big bikes. Too much for the thrill, not much for the thinking.”

Clay is looking at her, really looking as she stands there, his beaten leather kutte folded over her arm. She doesn’t need him to be afraid. She doesn’t think he is. But he grimaces, before he nods towards the President patch.

“Jax gets the gavel. Gemma gets her son. I get to keep everyone in the dark. What does Tara get?”

“Her safety. You leave her and her boys out of this. Anything happens to them—“

“And you? What do you get out of this, Annabel?”

She walks to the door, pauses and looks over at him.

Annabel doesn’t answer. Clay takes measure of her, before he grunts and presses his sore wounds. She doesn’t flinch at all, at how the traces of pain still seem to tie him down.

“You learnt a few things in New York, didn’t you?”

It’s almost respect, just barely. She knows better than to think he would see her as worthy, as someone who isn’t just as easily crushed as the bones in Tara’s hands, beaten like the bruises on Gemma’s skin. But he doesn’t seem to know how to feel, whether anger or irritation or even admiration. Annabel knows that’s enough for now.

“What did you tell her?”

“What?”

“When Tara asked you. If you love him.”

She’s taken aback at the question, “Why would you even care?”

“Humour me.”

“Of course I do. Everyone here is my family. Of course I love him.”

“If you want power, then you’ll need to change that.”

“What?”

Clay shrugs, and the sliver of the man who holds the head of the table at church, who lived with the shadow of John Teller’s murder creep through the fatigued body in the bed, the façade that she knows Clay will wear for as long as it works.

“Gemma, Tara, Jax. They all have a weakness. They have something to lose. It won’t take long for you to be exposed.”

“I’m not doing this for power,” she says, the hairs raised on the back of her neck. Clay doesn’t seem fazed, he’s looking through at her, looking as if they’re both there in the light, blazing hot flames flickering close. As if she’s flying closer to a sun that will singe her wings. “I’m not doing this for any of that.”

If he believes her, he doesn’t say. But Annabel leaves the room, trying to stop her hands from shaking. The Prospect zeroes in on what she’s holding and she says something vague, something stupid about Gemma and drycleaning. Bless the soul of the boy because he seems to believe her.

Clay’s words run through her mind as she drives home. She looks at the President patch, at the leather kutte. If she can be bothered, she knows there’s rules. She broke one or three or ten just then.

When she pulls up at home, Jax’s bike is in the driveway. He’s sitting on the porch swing, smoking as he slowly rocks back and forth.

Annabel gets out of the car, hands him the kutte.

“Bel.”

“Gavel’s yours. He’s agreed to it.”

“Annabel, what did you do?”

She sits down on the swing next to him, and Jax slowly pushes it back. The motion calms her for a moment, but it doesn’t stop the knots in her stomach, doesn’t settle the nerves that feel so raw, so exposed.

“Bel, what have you done?”

She says nothing for awhile. If Jax wants to yell or shout, he doesn’t. Bel’s amazed at his restraint.

“Make it right with Opie,” is all she can really say, without telling him everything. Without letting the dam burst, the truth about all of them, every single lie that everyone’s held, every single truth that they’ve buried—she wonders how much of her own truth he will hate her for. “He’s your brother. Before everyone else, he’s always been your brother before you both belonged to the club.”

Jax tucks some hair behind her shoulder, a hand brushing over the marks marring her skin, his eyes narrowing, “Bel—“

“I got drunk and bored last night, Jax. I’m sure you can relate.”

“What’s going on with you, Bel?”

“What’s going on with you?” she retorts. “You’re here when you’ve got a wife and kids at home.”

“I think she hates me. If I take the gavel, she’ll never forgive that.”

“She might not forgive it, but she won’t let go. Tara’s not going to let go of you that easily, Jax. Go home, make it right.”

“How the fuck does that make this?” Jax demands, “You got Clay to give up? Just like that?”

“He’s lying in a hospital bed attached to a morphine drip, you and I both know he’s not in a position to lead.”

“I was going to get out, Bel.”

“And now you’re President. Heavy is the head.” She stands up to go inside. “I’m exhausted. Go home, Jax.”

He grabs her hand and her fingers instinctively curl around it.

“Don’t,” is all she can say. “Please, don’t.”

He lets go.

Jax looks up at her, the swing still. His eyes are so clear, but his face is so tired. She wants to reach out, to be close, like how they were as kids and they could just drive to a diner and eat bad fries as they complained about the world. They’re not kids anymore.

“You left, Bel. I woke up, and you were gone.”

“Don’t,” she repeats, shaking her head slowly. “I don’t want to talk about it, Jax.”

“You were gone,” he says harshly, “You didn’t even say goodbye.”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it!”

“Why didn’t you stay?” Jax demands, standing up and towering over her. He’s too close. He’s all gasoline and cheap aerosol deodorant. His fucking beard is awful. Every muscle in his shoulders are tense as he breathes heavy, as he repeats, “You didn’t say goodbye. I woke up and you were gone.”

She doesn’t know what he wants from her, what she can say to make any of it better. There’s nothing Bel can say, nothing that changes what happened. It doesn’t change who they are now, the choices they’ve both made.

“You asked me to give you a reason to stay.”

“Maybe it wasn’t enough,” her voice cracks as she says it, hoping that it hurts the way it should, that it’s like a puncture through all the chambers of his heart like it is through hers. “Maybe you weren’t enough.”

“Say it again,” Jax dares, voice low. “Go on, say it again to my face, Bel.”

She can’t. She can’t say it. She doesn’t want to say it, doesn’t want to open up Pandora’s box when it took too long to keep it buried. 

“You’re a fucking coward,” he tells her, before pulling her close and kissing her. His beard scratches and his body is warm and she doesn’t want to let go. His mouth presses hard against hers, breath reeking of nicotine. It’s not nice, it’s not kind. It’s angry, desperate and Jax has every reason to be.

When they break apart, she feels weak, in the knees and her stomach and within her own resolve.

“Not enough?” he asks, “You want to say that to me again?”

Bel doesn’t dare, and she shakes her head numbly.

The fight dies out within Jax, and they can both only stand there. He seems almost hurt, almost sorry. When he tries to apologise, when he tries to lessen the strength of the tide that’s trying to drag them under, it just fails him.

The words fail and he presses his forehead to hers, arms around her shoulders as they stand there, the brief moment of the breaking peace, right before tomorrow when the war begins.

“Bel, I—“

“I know,” she says quietly. “I know.”

“Yeah,” Jax agrees. What are they even agreeing about. “Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The calm before the storm, is essentially what I view this as. 
> 
> Hopefully, this chapter sheds more insight into Annabel. The general view of her from everyone tends to be that of a very untouched innocent, but honestly, she’s got her own demons like everyone else. 
> 
> I did say the letters will come into play; it sort of devolved into this—Tara and Gemma both play the game the same way, having taken their cues from each other. Bel has a different way of approaching things, I suppose. 
> 
> I’m sad over the lack of Happy MVP Lowman in this chapter.


	7. To wear a hollowed crown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I made a mood board. It's a bit of a clusterfuck, faintly alluding to spoilers: https://pin.it/3gdUqzc
> 
> Enjoy!

07; to wear a hollowed crown. (Jax)

He doesn’t go home that night.

He can’t.

The President patch hangs over him like a shroud, a dark reaper ready to call time on his engagement, his family, the chance of getting out. Jax can’t go home, because if he goes home and he sees the way Tara looks at him, the way she will find a way to hate him while loving him, Jax doesn’t know if he can really live with that.

Actually, he knows he can. He’s lived with her disappointment, her jealousy, her determination. He can keep doing it, he loves her enough to want to live and love through it. Just that, Jax never really learns.

He goes to sleep at the clubhouse. Rat’s cleaning glasses with an old dish cloth, and Juice is sitting at the bar. He looks worn, tired. But there’s a weight that been lifted from him, as if the terror that was clawing its way around his chest is slowly fading away.

“You’re back,” Jax says and Juice nods.

“Took a drive out to Yosemite. Needed to clear my head.”

“Did it work?”

You can’t trust a guy who can’t stop the itch, who can’t find the grit to not just do something stupid. Juice did something stupid. Chibs clocked on. Jax saw it. Even Bel knew it.

“Heads on my shoulders, brother.”

Juice’s eyes land on the kutte in Jax’s hands. He freezes, and even Rat double takes.

You don’t touch another man’s leather. You don’t take it, not when they’re all brothers, and especially not from the one who holds the gavel.

That’s the thing though, Jax knows that Bel knows the rules. Freddie would have told her, she would have known just from growing up with them. But she still brought him the kutte, the pelt of Clay’s pride and crowned him king of crows, without even flinching.

“Church in the morning,” is all Jax can really say to Juice. “Tell the others.”

Juice nods, and Ratboy pours them out a round.

Bobby returns, and Jax embraces him, hand thumping on the man’s back. The house always seems sturdy with Bobby around.

“I miss much?”

“I’ll catch you up,” Jax says, “We gotta sit.”

Bobby can see the patch on Jax’s leather, and his smile is genuine.

“And then after, we drink,” Bobby promises, and Jax laughs. The house is sturdier already, warmer already.

It’s Chibs who he has sitting down as Sergeant in Arms. If it eats at Tig, the man doesn’t show it. They sit, and Jax doesn’t look at the empty seat that should be Opie’s. He has Bobby there instead.

They all know it should be Opie. But none of them can cower at the bright lights of a new era. Jax won’t let them. He’ll drag them out into the light with his bare hands.

“The Irish are a problem,” he says. “They only want to deal with Clay.”

“Cartel wants their guns, we can always find another supplier until Clay’s back on his feet,” Tig suggests. “Then business with them once he’s back.”

“I don’t want to keep our business with them tied on a vote of confidence in one man. It’s too fucking untenable.”

“If he gave you the patch while he’s out,” Bobby says, “We can levy that. Tell the Irish it’s a pass of command and trust.”

“We all know those bastards won’t listen,” Chibs says, and Jax nods. “Gaalen won’t deal and Gaalen is the one they’re taking orders from.”

Happy smirks and Juice’s left eye twitches when he sees the look on Happy’s face. Jax groans internally, because the last thing he needs is Happy ‘getting that guy super dead’ because he knows that man really wouldn’t hesitate if given the chance.

“If Galen’s the one we need to handle, then we’ll need to find a way to get him to put his faith in the Sons as a collective, not just Clay. Nothing can move forward otherwise.”

There’s a knock on the door. Juice grabs it, and holds it slightly closed.

“We’re sitting, can this wait?” he asks.

“Who is it?” Jax snaps.

“Uh,” Juice holds the door open awkwardly, and Annabel walks in. If the weight of their stares affects her nerves, it doesn’t show. She takes measure of all of them, every single one of them sitting at the redwood table.

(Just a few nights ago she couldn’t stop ragging on it. It’s no surprise, Jax thinks, that she doesn’t care much for the sanctity of church.)

“Bel, get out,” Jax says.

“I’m assuming you’re still discussing your Irish situation,” she says calmly, ignoring Jax’s order, “and how it’s near impossible to win the trust of a prickly asshole like Gaalen O’Shay without Clay at the table.”

“Annabel, I’m not telling you again. Get out.”

The file she’s carrying, it gets tossed onto the table.

“These are five potential distributors on the West Coast. The Irish might value trust, but they put their cause above all else. They’ve been losing traction in the States. You can’t fund a rebellion without cash flow.”

Bobby’s takes the file before Jax can say anything, perusing it quickly.

Annabel leans against the wall, waiting.

“How’d you get this?” Bobby asks, flipping through the file. He pulls off his glasses, cleaning them as he stares Annabel down. “They’re not potentials, Annabel. If offered, these guys would jump for it. I’m pretty sure that the ones in Nevada are in bed with the NRA.”

“You could be of that opinion, but I couldn’t possibly tell you.”

Jax stands, his chair noisy and scattering against the floor. Annabel remains where she is, the rest of the table caught in between.

“Anything else you’d like to share with the church?”

“Not particularly.”

Chibs is the one to suggest a recess, “Lads, let’s leave them to shout it out.”

When they’ve all cleared out, Jax sits back down. He knows better than to invite Bel to sit, to walk on sacred ground, but she does anyways. Not a hair out of place, completely unruffled. Against all the wood and the crack of light through the dirty window panes, she’s almost misplaced in her skinny jeans and heels.

They’re just metres away from where Clay was shot, where she had her bloodstained hands pressing on his chest to keep him from bleeding out.

“What the hell is this?”

She smiles instead, having spotted the patch. “Looks good. Did you sew it on yourself?”

“Fuck, Bel. What the hell are you doing? How do you know this crap?”

“You’re going to need me at that meeting, Jack.”

He would laugh, if he didn’t know that she’s being deadly serious.

“I don’t fucking need anything from you, not until you explain those god damn contacts and what the hell you’re playing at.”

“Jack, Gaalen is never going to sit down with you. He doesn’t trust you. As far as he sees it, you handed Kellan Ashby into the arms of his murderer, which isn’t helped by the fact that Jimmy was marked traitor by then. As far as Gaalen probably sees it, you’re a liability, a volatile one at that.”

“How the fuck are you so criminally well informed?”

She’s quiet for the moment, before she reaches out and takes his hand.

“Set the meeting, Jack.”

“You give me the Presidency, you come in here like you’re a part of this—this isn’t your business, you shouldn’t be shoving in like you have any authority on anything. I’m not just saying this because that’s the rule, but you know that it could hurt you? Maybe even kill you? There’s a reason Old Ladies stay the fuck out.”

“I’m not an Old Lady.”

“No,” he says quietly. “But you’re—“

“Don’t.”

He stops. Her hand tries to withdraw, but Jax tightens his grip.

“Stay out of this, Bel. I’m telling you, as a Son.”

“And I’m talking to you, as the President of the Sons. Set the meeting. Let me handle Gaalen. Arrange escorts for the convey.”

“Why’d you make me President?”

“It was inevitable, really.”

“All this crap about getting me out of Charming, to live my life, to have it all, was that just bullshit? You make me President, you tell us to expand the guns, you literally jumped from one side of the fence to the other.”

“Maybe I realised how all of this will end, and I don’t want to accept it,” she admits in a faltering whisper.

She was meant to be the good one. Better than him, better than any of them. She was meant to live because Tommy didn’t, to go places, be better, not be covered in the sins of the father, the cloak of the reaper.

He knows who she was meant to be. But now, all Jax can really think of is of how much easier it would be—it’s not as if he hasn’t had experience in clipping wings.

She stands up, her fingers slipped from his hand, just the whisper of touch briefly against his palm.

“I need you to stay out of this.”

“What you need is a deal. I can get you that.”

“If Gaalen won’t deal with us, what makes you think that this is any different?”

“Just set the meeting, Jack,” Bel tells him quietly. “You need a deal. This is the fastest way.”

“Why do you care? You don’t give a fuck about the club.”

“I don’t,” she agrees. “But I’m tired of being afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” Jax asks.

Annabel says nothing else, leaves the room.

The rest of the meeting makes more sense. Or maybe less sense. Jax doesn’t even know if he can even call this to a fucking vote. They do talk about when Clay will be back, and even then, Jax doesn’t even know how to answer that.

It’s Bobby who suggests it, “We go for the expansion. Take a vote.”

It passes. Chibs goes outside to make the call. Once everyone has filed out, Jax sits alone with Bobby.

“You’re on board with this?”

“It lines our pockets, and keeps the Irish happy, gets the guns to the cartel. Even if we want to pull back, any one of these distributors might pick up where we leave off.”

“You said the Nevada parties, they’re in bed with the NRA. That means they won’t be small.”

Bobby pushes his glasses up, going through the file again. “They run tight with a lot of people. Money laundering and guns and even whores. They’re not small but they’re not big either. They answer to a larger organisation in New York.”

“How do you know this?”

“You gotta remember my father used to run books for a mob. Some of the names and the key players still stick,” Bobby tells him, tapping himself on the forehead. “It’s not all that empty up here.”

“Is that why you voted yes?”

“They’re solid. What I would want to know is how your girl has this sort of reach.”

“She’s not my girl.”

Bobby just gives him a dubious look before he circles some names on the file. “It’s more cash in hand for us all, brother. It keeps a lot of us happy and will keep everyone else satisfied. You’re leading now. Where we go from here, it’s smoother sailing if we start off easy.”

Annabel is standing outside, on the phone. She hands it back to Chibs, and Jax watches from the door of the clubhouse.

She’s sitting at one of the old picnic tables. Happy’s next to her, having a smoke. She’s tense, and Happy sits there, a smoking sentry. Whatever he says to her, it seems to offer some relief because Annabel relaxes.

Chibs gets off the phone and nods.

Happy hands Bel the cigarette and she takes a long shaky drag.

It’s as if Jax turned on a program and missed the beginning. Or perhaps he doesn’t even know the language.

“Done?” he asks.

“Set for this afternoon,” Chibs tells him.

Annabel’s looking off into the distance, the smoke trailing as the cigarette slowly burns out. She drops it, the ember too warm, too close. Happy stomps it out and she blows on her fingers , trying to cool the shock.

“What’d they say?”

“They’re there to talk. No promises.”

“It’s something,” Jax mutters. “Maybe they’re just going to string us along, then demand we bring Clay into the mix.”

“They didn’t mention Clay. Seems the offer is enough to get their attention.” Chibs pauses, and Jax has a feeling about what the Scotsman wants to say. He stares Chibs down, daring him. “They asked for Annabel to be there.”

“You realise that’s not how this fucking works? And how weak this makes us look?” Anyone else and he would have physically thrown them out of the room. Anyone else, and he knows that the rest of the club might have done the same. She levies their goodwill like armour; Jax would almost admire it, but he can’t decide if he hates it or it annoyed by it. “You don’t just put yourself into club business, especially when—”

“—I don’t have a penis and a motorcycle?”

Happy snickers at her remark.

“I swear to god, Annabel,” Jax snaps, and Bel stares up at him calmly.

“You aren’t a Son.”

“Yes, my lack of adoring Croweaters fawning over me and my big black motorcycle gives it away.”

“Bel.” It’s Chibs who warns her, who shoots her a glance. She rolls her eyes, but she does smile at the way he huffs at her snark. “He’s not wrong. You’re putting yourself in the middle of this, when it’s club business. Not to mention, it’s not safe.”

“I’ve got her,” Happy says, pushing his kutte back, gun in holster flashed. “She’ll have cover.”

“That’s oddly very touching of you,” Annabel teases, nudging Happy with her shoulder. He rocks back, nudging her back and she’s laughing, “My knight in dusty leather.”

“I aim to kill.”

“No, I think what you mean is you aim to please.”

“Nope.”

It’s like Jax has walked into fucking Whosville and he’s stopped speaking the language.

“Jacky, they want her there. And trying to stop her from going isn’t going to help us. It’s set for this afternoon. We go in, make the deal. If the Irish don’t want it, we wait until Clay’s back in the fold. Nothing to lose.”

He throws his hands up in the air, stomping off into the clubhouse for a drink. He doesn’t answer when Bobby asks what’s happening. Juice makes himself scarce, not willing to risk triggering an undeserved punch. Rat’s pouring the shots.

“Uh, Jax? Tara called,” V-lin says, coming from the garage. “Your sons are in daycare, she’s got the day off.”

Jax runs his hands over his face, groaning and moaning and reaching for the whiskey.

“Women huh,” Bobby remarks, “This is why I got a divorce.”

Really, Jax can’t blame him either.

It doesn’t slip by him, the way Happy’s looming as they get prepared. She’s talking quietly to Chibs, leaning against his bike. She looks so small next to it all, the leather and metal, the bravado they all wield to no result.

Jax watches. He can only watch. She sometimes smiles, or even laughs at something, but there’s a nerve that’s been touched—she’s flighty, looking around every so often, constantly checking to see if Happy’s got her six. They haven’t even left TM yet.

“This is a bad idea,” Tig mutters, “Pussy just complicates everything.”

“I’ll need you to shut the fuck up, and when it goes wrong, that’s when you can say ‘I told you so’, alright?” Jax snaps, and Tig nods. Jax resists the urge to kick something, before he admits, “This is a really fucking bad idea.”

“So don’t do it.”

Jax snorts.

“Must be good, if you can’t say no to her.” Jax shoots him a warning glare and Tig backs off a bit. It takes a minute, before Tig splutters, then laughs, completely dismayed. “There isn’t any good or bad, is there? You two aren’t…” He mimes something lewd, finger poking through a hole, as he giggles like a twelve year old.

“Shut up, Tig.”

“This isn’t normal, brother. Or healthy, you know.”

“The Irish want her there. I don’t know why.”

There’s a clatter, when Phil and Rat drop some supplies, and Bel gets up, flinching.

This is a really terrible idea.

She’s in those jeans and a striped blouse. The heels are going to be hell for her, but he can’t do anything about that. He shoves a helmet to her, and a flannel shirt, “The wind will bite you, if you go like that.”

“Thanks,” she mutters, pulling the shirt on.

“It’s not been washed.”

“It’s fine.”

“Get a jacket of yours,” he says to Rat, “You’re skinny enough.”

“Jax, I’ll be fine.”

“The wind’s gonna fucking slap you, and I’ll never hear the end of it. Go wait by my bike.”

Rat’s hurrying out of the clubhouse. He hands her jacket after jacket, most of them drowning her. Jax looks on, side by side with Chibs.

Rat’s fished out an old black denim jacket. It’s ripped and oversized on Bel, as she folds up the sleeves. Rat’s all fidgety as he tries to help her adjust the helmet strap without touching her face or any part of her. Tig is sniggering next to them.

“Anything happens to her, you two are done,” Jax says quietly.

“I hear you,” Chibs murmurs.

“No, you don’t,” he snaps to Chibs. “You’re backing this. Why?”

“Jacky, we need those guns.”

Ratboy splutters when Tig shoves him aside, impatience getting the best of him. He fixes up the helmet, and Bel smiles up at him cheekily.

“My hero,” Bel says to the man.

“Do I get a kiss from the lady?”

She laughs, pressing a kiss to his cheek as Tig winks at her.

“Let’s just get this done,” Jax mutters.

Bel hasn’t been on his bike in a very long time, he realises. Hasn’t since she’s been back.

“If I tell you to get out, you go with one of the guys, and you get out.”

“Jax.”

“Do you understand me?”

He hears her sigh, before she agrees. “Okay.”

“It’s not an overly long drive, but don’t let go, and don’t drop your leg,” he warns.

“Okay.”

“And Bel—”

“Okay,” she interrupts. “Jax. I get it.”

He guns the engine. She doesn’t get it, but they’re all going down the same road to hell anyways.

When they get to the warehouse, Bel looks around carefully.

“There’s an exit, past those containers,” Jax says, pointing it out. “Also, there’s another through the backroom.”

“It’ll take you through the back of the acreage,” Juice adds on, “But it’s alright. You just follow the path, and one point you can hit a highway.” He puts a hand on her shoulder. “You won’t get lost.”

“No bears?”

“No bears,” he promises.

Bel pulls off the jacket and flannel, fanning herself with a hand, “You need to ventilate this place.”

“Yeah sorry, that’s was a priority for a warehouse that stores cocaine and guns,” Bobby mutters.

“It should be, if there’s a loose spark. All that gunpowder, anything could set it off. You’ve got your ammo here too, right?”

Bobby raises an eyebrow, and nods.

“You shouldn’t keep the party goods and hardware in the same place.”

“Why is that?”

They can hear the Irish pulling up. Jax gestures, and they all form up. Jax can see Bel trying to calm herself, slowing her breathing. For a second, he swears that her hand brushes against Chibs, as they watch as the Irish get out of their SUVs.

Gaalen barely glances at most of them, buttoning up his suit jacket as he gets out of the car. Jax steps forward to talk, but Gaalen looks right past him as well.

“I was sorry to hear about Albert,” Gaalen says, to Annabel. He offers a hand, and Annabel takes it. He shakes it, in condolence and he takes a good measure of her. “He was a great man. Did business well, and did it hard. Nerves of steel, and cuts sharper than it too.”

“Thank you. Your relationship was a valued one for him, and my family’s.”

Jax stares, confused and Chibs shakes his head slightly. It wouldn’t help any of them to interrupt. Gaalen seems intent, his men lingering behind as he and Annabel talk.

“I was surprised, not just to hear from you but also to see you bringing something to the table. For those bastards, no less.”

“The idea of a West Coast expansion has always been overlooked. I intend to remedy that.”

“So,” he finally decides to address the rest of them, sweeping past Annabel to walk up to Jax, “You decide to get a Whitley on your team?”

Jax doesn’t know how to answer, but it’s Annabel who cuts in. She hasn’t got nerves, she’s all cold, fire forged steel.

“I hear that there’s a problem of trust and goodwill between everyone. My job is simply to facilitate something agreeable and beneficial to everyone here.”

Gaalen scoffs, smirking at her. “You’re Albert’s girl, alright.”

“You can’t tell me that the expansion of distributors, more funding for your cause, that isn’t the least bit appealing? Not to mention, the land ownership that will be settled. Your own base, right here for the sympathisers and loyalists that will undoubtedly come out of the woodwork for you,” she says, as Gaalen circles her slowly. He’s like a shark, eyes alert as he follows the blood in the water. Annabel doesn’t even look at him, staring right ahead as they talk.

“Albert Whitley,” Bobby mutters to Jax, “Albert fucking Whitley.”

“And yet to grow stateside means to be on the radar of law enforcement. The risk of is ours, more than yours.”

She’s smiling, as Gaalen keeps circling.

“There’s nothing to be gained if you don’t risk something.”

“And what are you risking?”

“My reputation.”

“You haven’t got one. Your brother’s however, it speaks for him. You’re a blank slate.”

“And isn’t that better, than the potential of someone who has red slashed all over their margin?”

“Is why that he kept you clean all these years? Hiding you away like a princess in a tower?”

“Well, I’m not hiding anymore, am I?”

Gaalen smirks, stopping behind her and looking at Jax, at the Sons, “And you’re willing to risk it? For this?”

“I’m just doing what needs to be done.”

“You ask her to do this for you?” he says to Jax.

“It was an agreement,” Jax replies. Annabel flinches a little as Gaalen leans in, saying something quietly to her. But she nods, and Gaalen walks to talk to his men. Annabel takes quick steps towards Jax, and Bobby lets out a long sigh.

“You’re Albert Whitley’s kid?” Bobby asks in a low tone, keeping an eye on the Irish. “You’re a fucking Whitley?”

“It’s a long story,” Annabel mutters. “You want your guns or not?”

“Jax, we get involved with this, with the Whitleys, we will owe her. Everything comes with a price with them,” Bobby warns, “Trust me, I know this. They’re moving through the Midwest, buying up property to mask up the profits—she’s here to expand for them.”

“I’m not here for them,” Annabel snaps, “But you need me.”

“Can we discuss this and disagree later when we aren’t in front of the Irish?” Jax hisses.

Bobby shoots Annabel a warning glare, and she ignores it, composing herself.

Chibs has a hand around her arm, muttering quietly, “Don’t push it with Gaalen, Bel. Know your limit on this.”

Gaalen’s saying something, and his men nod. He looks briefly over to them, his smile sharpening before he keeps talking. One of the men gets on the phone, and Gaalen walks back over.

“We’ll bring the next shipment in two days. Bring your Mexican pushers, if they still want to inspect the hardware. We do this distribution deal twice, and then we revisit whether the profit is worth it.”

Jax offers a hand, and Gaalen takes it. He’s amused, chuckling at Jax.

“I expect Clay to be in the loop,” he instructs, “And I want her involved.”

“She was here to negotiate, Gaalen. Nothing more.”

“No Whitley, no deal. It’s on her family’s good name that we’re risking this. I’m assuming it’ll be on her dime that you’ll have the initial payment too.”

“Annabel’s not involved in this. She’s just the negotiator. We’ll have Clay back at the table to help oversee it.”

Gaalen yanks him closer, his tone dark and his eyes cold. “You want to hide her away in an ivory tower, like her father did? I’ll tear it down stone by stone. You’ve got no idea what you’ve unpacked now that they’re involved in this.”

“You leave her out of this,” Jax warns. “This is all about the guns and the cash. Nothing more.”

“Try telling that to Nicholas Whitley. I’ll see you in two days.”

When the Irish leave, there’s a brief moment of silence. And then, that’s when everyone’s talking all at once, voices overlapping as people ask questions, demand for answers, as Jax’s own head rings with the confusion that’s knocked him sidewards.

Annabel says nothing. Her expression is unreadable.

Chibs stands with her, a hand on the back of her neck. He’s not surprised. He hasn’t even got questions.

He knew.

He backed her for this.

He knew.

“Let’s head back. We’ll talk there,” Jax orders.

“Jax, you should have told me who her father was,” Bobby mutters. “We’re in a fuckload of trouble now.”

“I didn’t know.”

They’re getting on their bikes, and Bobby is stunned.

“What?”

“I didn’t fucking know, okay?” Jax snaps.

Bel is standing with Happy, pulling on the jacket and helmet. She won’t even look at Jax, either too guarded or too afraid. Chibs is talking to them, and Happy nods.

“You need to handle that,” Bobby tells him, following Jax’s wandering attention, “You’re the fucking President. I know people that deal with the Whitleys. They will eat us all alive.”

“She did it.”

“What now?”

“She made me President,” Jax says quietly. “She did this. All of this.”

Bobby’s stunned silence, and disappointment is too heavy for him to swallow. The only comfort he has is the silence on the ride him.

Tig gets called up, about his daughter and a DUI. Jax sends him on his way, and Tig is more than happy to escape, “Saves me having to hear the shouting and the fucking,” he chuckles. Jax glares, and Tig giggles as he speeds off to deal with his demon spawn.

“We need to talk,” Jax says, and Chibs nods.

They sit in the chapel, Jax and Bobby on one side of the table, with Chibs, Bel and Happy on the other.

“Explain. Now.”

“It’s not their fault,” Bel says.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” he snaps, “You’re in my fucking church, Annabel. Don’t fucking try me this time.”

“Jacky, the Whitleys were trying to find her. At least this way, we get a jump start on being prepared.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me before our deal with the Irish? This lands on us. The fucking Whitleys coming to our doorstep, we don’t have the bodies or the firepower, or the fucking reach to handle them.”

“I was just clean up,” Happy mutters. “Literally just being a good neighbour.”

“What do you mean cleaning up?” Bobby splutters, “What was there to clean up? Oh fuck, whose body did you clean up?”

“Body? What body?”

“There’s a fucking dead person out there now?” Jax yells, “We barely got past Clay being gunned down—Roosevelt’s gonna have a fucking field day.”

“Okay, just calm down,” Annabel snaps, “There’s no body. There’s nothing to investigate. The rug’s been burned.”

“What rug—never mind,” Bobby groans.

“I didn’t even know that Albert Whitley was my father until a year ago,” Annabel says quietly. “I didn’t know. I didn’t even know why he kept me under his roof, married me to his stepson, protected me, taught me, financed me—I didn’t know this until he decided to tell me on his deathbed. I didn’t ask for it either, Jax. I didn’t ask for his empire, I didn’t ask him to give me the inheritance—”

“Inheritance, of course there’s a god damn inheritance,” Bobby mutters.

“If you know a way to deal with my family that doesn’t involve black market substances or guns or the human trading, or running numbers through shell corporations, please, I’d be glad to fucking hear it.”

“Maybe don’t bring it to a small town, and lie and hide this from the people who raised you and loved you?”

“I thought I’d be safe here. I was wrong. Plans change.”

“What plan? Wait, is this to do with the body?” Jax asks, filled with dread. “Bel, what have you gotten us into? If this gets too big, we won’t just have local on us, we might have federal law enforcement back on our asses.”

“I can handle that,” Bel mutters.

“Of course you can,” Bobby snorts.

“Look, if we’re going to talk about this, I really need you to tone down being an ass by like, seventy percent,” she hisses to Bobby. “I’m real sorry that you don’t get to cruise by, sit back and hope that it’ll be an easy stretch with lined pockets. But it’s not like a business expansion is an issue here. You’re taking issue because you aren’t the ones in control of it.”

“You aren’t a Son. We shouldn’t even have let you get involved. You took advantage of our trust,” Bobby shouts, standing up, “You took advantage of Jax’s trust, you are dragging us into something bigger than what this club needs.”

“And you let the benefit and the gains take priority,” Bel replies coldly, “So don’t you dare act like you will all be the victims here when really, that was just bad business on your part. Nothing in this room gets by without a vote. You all went along with it, knowing that it’s putting blind faith into something else, just to get things done. You cared more about the result than the process, so don’t fucking act like this is on me, when what you really need is a refresher on not making poor business decisions.”

“Bel,” Chibs snaps.

The flare of her temper calms within seconds, and she leans back in her chair, glares at a spot on the wall behind Bobby’s head.

Jax looks between the two of them, and how Happy seems to be astral projecting his consciousness in an attempt to avoid the rest of the conversation.

“What’d she promise you?”

“What?” Chibs asks, confused.

“You’re siding her on this, defending her on this. So, what’s in it for you?”

“Jacky, I’m on your side, I’m on the club’s side. There’s nothing in it for me.”

“The Irish want her there. For the deals. Not only have you brought us into a bigger mess than the cartel, but now you’re asking me to risk your safety, the extra bodies to protect you every time. Do you understand what you’ve done?” he snarls, to Bel, who finally deigns to look at him.

“If that’s meant to scare me into an apology, you’re going about it the wrong way.”

“Fuck, Bel. You’ve put us on the radars of one of the biggest criminal organisations on the East Coast. Not just us, but every branch of reapers as well. If any of us fall, if any lives are forfeit from this, the blood is on your hands.”

“I’m a Whitley, I was born with blood on my hands,” Bel tells him calmly. “Are we done?”

She doesn’t wait for him to respond, just walks out of the room, slamming the door on her way out.

He can’t go home.

He drinks.

He drinks and he drinks, and ignores the call from Gemma.

He can’t go home, knowing the disappointment in Tara’s eyes, the hate and love that will come with his choice to hold the gavel. Jax can only sit at the bar, letting the Prospects pour shots, watching as Juice lounges with a joint and some Croweater crawling all over him.

Happy’s got a bottle of tequila, and two girls who want him to lick the shots off their tits. He more than easily obliges, face pushed into their breasts as they simper.

It’s getting dark outside.

Jax goes out, to get some air.

Bel’s standing in the garage, as Chibs works on his bike. She’s sitting on a chair, one leg propped over as she rests her chin on her knee.

Chibs is tinkering, and they don’t talk at all.

Jax lights a cigarette, watching.

He can only really watch her.

Don’t, she said. Don’t.

So, he can’t.

“Give me a reason to stay,” but he couldn’t say the words she needed to hear. He didn’t really know what she wanted him to say.

She was sixteen, she was sixteen and putting herself into his lap, legs straddling him as they’re in the darkness of his room at the clubhouse.

“Bel,” he breathed. There was ink that’s barely healed over, her fingers running over the lines of his tattoos. It stung, briefly. But she remedied it with a kiss, her fingers tangled in his hair as his arms pull her closer, arms strong around her waist.

“I don’t want to leave.”

“So stay,” he muttered, both of them barely able to breath the thick air in between rushed, hot kisses.

“I don’t have anything here.”

“So why did you come here?”

She pulled back, looking at him.

Jax remembers how fucking hard he was, the way her skin felt in his hands. She was leaving. Tara left. His father decided to leave, albeit in a more permanent way. It seemed as if everyone else moved forward, while he remained in the same place, the world passing way.

“Do you want me to stay?” she asked. She was sixteen, she was so young, and looked so small. It was an honest question, a broken question because his answer didn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter, because the answer wouldn’t be the right one anyways.

“You should go,” he said, to be a better man, “I mean, get out of my room.”

“Why?”

He didn’t answer why. He didn’t really want to give her a reason, because Bel was there, in his arms, in his lap, willing as fuck and they both knew it was inevitable, really. She wouldn’t be here otherwise.

“You sure?” he asked, pulling off the yellow sundress she was wearing.

“Just give me a reason to stay,” she whispered, a hand on his face as she kissed him, “Or at the very least, let’s just say goodbye.”

He thinks that he might have loved her first, if it hadn’t been for Tommy, hadn’t been for Tara.

Jax doesn’t regret the way they all choose other people in different orders. He doesn’t know whether or not it can be explained. Maybe it’s just who they are. It might be genetic, the way Gemma chose JT and then Clay, and perhaps maybe even someone else after.

Bel never asks him to choose her, and he never asked her to be his.

But he kissed her that night, just as painful and hot and needed like it was when she was sixteen. That was it, really, the inevitable collision of gravity. For the longest time, she went away, and just like that, he could pretend that there’s no such thing as gravity.

Jax watches as Chibs looks up from his bike.

Bel smiles at him, a small coy smile and she says something that makes him laugh.

They seem to hesitate, and Jax watches as Chibs lingers, holds back. Chibs is languid in every move, leaning against the garage table as Bel gets up and walks to him.

Jax cannot determine if it is jealousy or anger or regret, if there’s something real that’s tearing through his insides as he keeps watching. The entire world feels heavy, it’s felt heavy the moment she handed him the patch.

Chibs reaches out, tucking some hair behind her face. Bel’s fingers are curling into his shirt. They’re both standing under the dim garage light, the outside world a problem for another day. The way Bel smiles, its warmth directed to Chibs, it makes Jax run cold. Chibs seems to wait, almost daring her to make the first move.

It’s a moment too intimate to be the first time.

Jax can’t watch anymore.

He walks back into the clubhouse and grabs a bottle of whiskey behind the bar.

There’s a dark haired croweater, smiling at him. Her hair is in waves, like Tara’s, but there’s something about that smile.

He’ll fuck that girl hard. He’ll do just that, and pretend it’s someone. He won’t know who he’s pretending.

Jax drowns his sorrows, in whiskey and cunt and only then it makes sense, why JT was always so fucking miserable.

He should have it all.

How the fuck did he end up here?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long. Honestly, I feel like the weakest part of this story is anything to do with club business and trying to write this like it's a legit deal that the Sons would go through with. I stupidly have made this some part of the plot, and so, it took me longer to deal with. I might or might not write a Tara chapter soon, because a lot of things are going to be affecting her as well. 
> 
> Also, holy shit Jax and Bel might have the world's most frustrating relationship because all they do is fight and have moments and I'm there just wondering if these two crazy kids will figure shit out (spoiler alert, they probably won't for awhile). I honestly feel bad for Chibs because I can't see this being an easy ride for any of them now. Why the fuck is this a triangle. But is it a triangle if they can't get their shit together? 
> 
> MVP Happy!!!!!!!! Somehow he seems to just pop up, acting like Bel's unofficial bodyguard. I have this headcanon that as a kid, Happy had a little sister who died and so Bel sort of reminds him of that. I sadly might not get to a Happy chapter, so his headcanon meta shall exist in the notes. 
> 
> Also, I adore your comments and questions. Please keep them coming. Hope you enjoy it.
> 
> (Also, it's like I've written Nicholas as the big bad wolf but I'm too much of a coward to write him into Charming because I think I can only handle so much chaos and tragedy. Any guesses as to what happens next AHAHA)


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